"DEAR NIE: That good-for-nothing little scrub has been here, talken aboute you, and acting as if you was hand-and-glove with him. Now Nelie, I don't want to interfere with you anyway and I won't if you say the word. But I never felt just righte about that fellow, and what I done long ago to make you tollerate him, and now I want to make it up to you if I can. He is a common low-down person, and he isn't fit to speake to you, and I hope you wont speake to him. The divorce, the way I look at it, don't make any difference; hese just as much married as what he ever was, and if he had never been married atoll, it wouldn't of made any difference as far as I feel about it. Now Nelie, you are old enough to take care of yourself, but I hope if that fellow ever comes around you again, you'll box his ears and be done with him. I know hes got a smooth tongue, and he can make you laugh in spite of yourselfe, but don't you have anything to do with him. "MOTHER. "P. S. I have been talken it over with Mrs. Burton, and she thinks just the way I do aboute it. She thinks you are good enough for the best, and you no need to throw yourself away on such a perfect little scamp. In haste. How is that cellebrated picture that you are painting with Mr. Ludlow getting along?" * * * * * Cornelia got this letter from the postman at Mrs. Montgomery's door, when she opened it to go out in the morning, and she read it on her way to the Synthesis. It seemed to make the air reel around her, and step by step she felt as if she should fall. A wild anger swelled her heart, and left no room there for shame even. She wondered what abominable lies that little wretch had told; but they must have been impudent indeed to overcome her mother's life-long reluctance from writing and her well-grounded fears of spelling, so far as to make her send a letter out of the usual course. But when her first fury passed, and she began to grow weak in the revulsion, she felt only her helplessness in the presence of such audacity, and a fear that nothing could save her from him. If he could make her so far forget herself as to tolerate him, to listen to his stories, to laugh at his jokes, and show him that she enjoyed his company, after all she knew of him, then he could make her marry him, if he tried. The logic was perfect, and it seemed but another link in the infrangible chain of events, when she found another letter waiting for her at the office of the Synthesis. It bore the postmark of Lakeland, of the same date as her mother's, and in the corner of the envelope the business card of Gates & Clarkson, Dealers in Art Goods; J. B. Dickerson, in a line of fine print at the top was modestly "with" them.