It was characteristic of the man that he opened the business letter first. It was from his partner, who was growing old and more and more reliant on Vane's judgment, and it contained an offer of a quarter of a million from Welsh for their interest in the Bellefontaine and Pacific Railway. Nearly every village in the Western States has a Pacific railway, but comparatively few have reached the Pacific. Most of them run vaguely in a westerly direction for a hundred miles or so, and are managed by an agent of the bondholders. But the Bellefontaine P. R. was parallel to another Pacific road, which had at last been put on a successful basis by Welsh, the railroad king; and Welsh, who had sold all his own stock in the successful road, of which he was president, and who had further agreed to sell considerably more stock than he owned, was now desirous of finishing the Bellefontaine and Pacific, and running it in competition with his own road. Vane wrote a telegram advising his partner to demand half a million for their interest in the Bellefontaine Pacific; and then he opened Miss Thomas's letter. Cinerea Lake, June 25, 187-, it was dated. Now, where and what, thought Vane, is Cinerea? "My dear Mr. Vane," it ran on, "I think of you all the day, and often cannot sleep at night. What can you think of me? If I could only see you, and feel that you would understand me; how unhappy you have made me by what you told me the other evening! I wish now that I had not told you of my forgiveness, although I had fully forgiven you in my heart. I wish I had not spoken it, and then our friendship would not have been broken. I feel now that you cannot think of me as your friend; that you believe I have been intentionally cruel and unkind to you. Why _did_ you tell me? "I may be doing wrong, wrong again, in writing to you. I want so much to ask you to come to see me--you will come, won't you? when you come back? "W. T. Sunday night." "Pish!" said Vane, and he crumpled up the letter in his pocket and went to walk, in the late afternoon. Returning, the doctor passed him in a carriage with footmen, and he met him on the threshold of his house with an invitation to visit at Monrepos. The people who had taken the place were friends of the Greshams, and had known Mrs. Vane. Of course, Vane could not go; but the question gave the needed fillip to his action. He must do something; he must go somewhere. It is the nature of man to go somewhere.