Mark knew he must say something to ward off Bell’s attacks, and he continued talking of Dr. Grant and how much he was liked by the poor wretches who needed some one like him to keep them from dying of homesickness if nothing else; then, after a few bantering words concerning Lieutenant Bob and the _picture_ he carried into every battle, buttoned closely over his heart, Mark Ray took his leave, while Bell ran up to her mother’s room as a seamstress was occupying her own. Mrs. Cameron was out that afternoon, and that she had dressed in a hurry was indicated by the unusual confusion of her room. Drawers were left open and various articles scattered about, while on the floor, just as it had fallen from a glove-box, lay a _letter_ which Bell picked up, intending to replace it. “_Miss Helen Lennox_,” she read in astonishment. “How came Helen Lennox’s letter _here_, and from _Mark Ray_ too,” she continued, still more amazed as she took the neatly folded note from the envelope and glanced at the name. “Foul play somewhere. Can it be mother?” she asked, as she read enough to know that she held in her hand Mark’s offer of marriage, which had in some mysterious manner found its way to her mother’s room. “I don’t understand it,” she said, racking her brain for a solution of the mystery. “But I’ll send it to Helen this very day, and to-morrow I’ll tell Mark Ray.” Procrastination was not one of Bell Cameron’s faults, and for full half an hour before her mother and Juno came home, the stolen letter had been lying in the mail box where Bell herself deposited it, together with a few hurriedly-written lines, telling how it came into her hands, but offering no explanation of any kind. “Mark is home now on a leave of absence which expires day after to-morrow,” she wrote, “I am going round to see him, and if you do not hear from him in person I am greatly mistaken.” The next day a series of hindrances kept Bell from making her call as early as she had intended, so that Mrs. Banker and Mark were just rising from dinner when told she was in the parlor. “I meant to have come before,” she said, seating herself by Mark, “but I could not get away. I have brought you some good news. I think,—that is,—yes, I know there has been some mistake, some wrong somewhere. Mark Ray, yesterday afternoon I found,—no matter where or how—a letter intended for Helen Lennox, which I am positive she never saw or heard of; at least her denial to me that a certain Mark Ray had ever offered himself is a proof that she never saw what _was_ an offer made just before you went away. I read enough to know that, and then I took the letter and——” She hesitated, while Mark’s eyes turned dark with excitement, and even Mrs. Banker, scarcely less interested, leaned eagerly forward, saying, “And what? Go on, Miss Cameron. What did you do with that letter?”