love, if they were innocent and pure, as she fain would believe them to be for the sake of her dead father; and if they were not innocent and pure, “I do not wish to know it. I should hate him—hate him always in his grave!” she said, as she picked up the letter and resolutely put it back in the envelope with the other two. Once she thought to burn them, as she had the hair and thus put temptation away forever; but as often as she held them toward the lamp she had lighted again, as often something checked her, until a kind of superstitious conviction took possession of her that she _must not_ burn those letters written by “Little Tina.” “But I will never, never read them,” she said; and dropping on her knees, with the package held tightly in her hand, she registered a vow, that so long as she lived she would not seek to know what the letters contained unless circumstances should arise which would make the reading of them a necessity. This last condition came to her mind she hardly knew how or why, for she had no idea that any circumstances could arise which would make the reading of the letters necessary. Searching through her trunks and drawers, she found four paper boxes of different sizes, and putting the envelope in the smallest of them, placed that in the next larger size, and so on, writing upon the cover of the last one. “To be burned without opening in case of my death.” Then tying the lid securely with a strong cord, she mounted upon a chair, and placed the package upon the highest shelf of the closet, where neither she nor any one could see it. “There, little black-haired Tina,” she said, as she came down from the chair and out into her chamber, “your secret, if you had one with my father, is safe—not for _your_ sake, though, you blue-black-haired jade!” and Queenie set her foot down viciously: “not for your sake, but for father’s, who might have been silly enough to be caught by your pretty face, and to be flattered by you, for, of course, you ran after him, and widowers are fools, I’ve heard say.” Having thus settled the unknown Tina, and dismissed her from her mind for the time being at least, Queenie went back to the remaining package in the box—the one tied with a blue ribbon, and labeled “Margaret’s letters.” “Mother’s,” she said, softly, with a quick, gasping breath; “and now I shall know something of her at last;” and she kissed tenderly the time-worn envelope which held her mother’s letters.