She kissed the girl affectionately, and held her hand, but Elinor did not answer. She turned her white face towards her friend, and bit her lips hard, but the words would not come. “You are suffering, my poor dear,” went on Margaret, tenderly, as she made her sit down, and removed her hat and cloak. “Can’t you trust me with your trouble? Haven’t I had enough of my own? Ah! cry, that’s better. God sends us tears, in order that our hearts may not break! And now, what is it? Is anyone ill at home?” Elinor shook her head. The tears were rolling slowly one by one, down her marble cheeks, but she jerked them away as they came, as though it were a shame to weep. After a long pause, she swallowed something in her throat and commenced in a husky voice: “It concerns Ralph, Margaret! He has been untrue to me! All is over between us!” “Oh! surely not!” said Margaret, “have you had a full explanation with him? Who told you he had been untrue? Has Ralph asked for a release from his engagement?” “No! but he shall have it!” She then went on to tell the story of the finding of Harriet Brandt’s letters in Captain Pullen’s grate--and of the interview she had had with the girl that afternoon. “She did not attempt to deny it,” continued Elinor. “On the contrary she declared that he had made love to her all the time he was at Heyst--that he had said she was the only woman who had ever touched his heart, and that no man with human feelings could be happy with such a cold, reserved nature as mine! And if you could see her letters to him, Margaret--I wish I had not given them to her, but she snatched them from my hand--they were _too_ dreadful! I never read such letters from a woman to a man. I did not know they could be written.” “But, Elinor, it strikes me that all this time, you have only heard one side of the question. What does it signify what Miss Brandt may say? The only thing of importance to you is, what Ralph will say.” “But there were her letters--they told their own story! They were full of nothing but ‘dearests’ and ‘darlings,’ and reminders of how he had embraced her in one place, and what he had said to her in another--such letters as I could not write to a man, if it were to save my life!” “I can quite understand that! Miss Brandt and you possess two totally different natures. And cannot you understand that a girl like that, half educated, wholly ignorant of the usages of society, with a passionate undeveloped nature and a bold spirit, might write as you have described her doing, against the wishes of the recipient of her letters? You say that Ralph threw her epistles in the grate just as they were. Does that look as if he valued them, or felt himself to be guilty concerning their reception?” “But, Margaret, you know he _did_ make himself conspicuous with the Gobellis and Miss Brandt at Heyst! I think everyone noticed their intimacy!”