As she straightened the piano cover and set the chairs against the wall Rhoda’s lips curved in a proud little smile at the thought that his love for her was strong enough, her attraction for him potent enough, to hold his heart thus steadily against her constant refusal of his wish. For herself, she knew that she would never marry any one else. But it was different, she told herself, with a man. Naturally, she reflected, no one could expect him to remain true very long to a girl who told him “no” over and over again, and it would be no more than any man would be likely to do if he consoled himself with some other girl’s love. It would be much harder to bear, she confessed to herself, if that girl should be her own sister than if she were some far-away being who would take Jeff entirely out of her life and leave him and their unfortunate love a mere memory. The thought of such an ending of their romance, wherein she would be compelled to see her sister in the place which by right of love ought to be her own, made more insistent the ache in her heart and presently drove her upstairs to lock her door and take from her bureau the box tied with white ribbon. A number of letters lay in it now, beneath the faded rose. She took them out, caressingly, turning each one over in her hands, noting its date, glancing with soft eyes at its closely written pages. Then she began to read them as carefully as if she had not already pored over them a dozen times. For the most part they were arguments in defense of the institution of slavery and the interests of his section. But these were interspersed with items of personal interest, little accounts of what he and his sister were doing, comments upon the duties and the pleasures of their life, and now and then an audacious mention, which would make Rhoda at first frown and then smile tenderly, of some holiday they would make or something they would do when she should be installed as mistress at Fairmount. But evidently her lover was hoping to win her by appeals to her intelligence, by trying to convince her that the ideals which he and his section cherished were righteous and desirable. “I do not yet understand,” she read in the latest letter, still unanswered, “how any one possessing a nature as noble and upright as I know yours to be can yet engage in that work in which you told me you glory so much. (I refer to the assisting of runaway slaves). I do not see how you can reconcile the deliberate breaking of the laws of your country and the taking of other people’s property with the dictates of a scrupulous conscience. But I am well assured that you would not engage in this course if you did not believe it to be thoroughly honorable and right. And therefore I merely accept the fact and marvel at it.”