"Once you said it would kill you if you believed I could be false to you. If by that you meant that, having given my promise to you to be your wife at some future time, I must school myself to love you, and will be considered false if love do not come at my bidding or yours, I say to you solemnly, release me now. I may not love, but I cannot and will not deceive you, even by simulating love that does not exist. Suppose that love were to be kindled in my heart. Suppose I were to learn to care for some one here. You would be the first one to know it; for I would tell you as soon as I knew it myself. _Then_ what could I hope for,--or you? Surely you would not want to marry a girl who loved another man. But is it much better to marry one who feels that she does not love you? Think of it, Steven: I am very lonely, very far from happy, very wretched over Kate's evident trouble and all the sorrow I am bringing you and yours; but have I misled or deceived you in any one thing? Once only has a word been spoken or a scene occurred that you could perhaps have objected to. I told you the whole thing in my letter of Sunday last, and why I had not told Kate. We have not met since that night, Mr. Hayne and I, and may not; but he is a man whose story excites my profound pity and sorrow, and he is one of the two or three I feel that I would like to see more of. Is this being false to you or to my promise? If so, Steven, you cannot say that I have not given you the whole truth. "It is very late at night,--one o'clock,--and Kate is not yet asleep, and the captain is still down-stairs, reading. He is not looking well at all, and Kate is sorely anxious about him. It was his evidence that brought years of ostracism and misery upon Lieutenant Hayne, and there are vague indications that in his own regiment the officers are beginning to believe that possibly he was not the guilty man. The cavalry officers, of course, say nothing to us on the subject, and I have never heard the full story. If he has been, as is suggested, the victim of a scoundrel, and Captain Rayner was at fault in his evidence, no punishment on earth could be too great for the villain who planned his ruin, and no remorse could atone for Captain Rayner's share. I never saw so sad a face on mortal man as Mr. Hayne's. Steven Van Antwerp, I wish I _were_ a man! I would trace that mystery to the bitter end. "This is a strange letter to send to--to you; but I am a strange girl. Already I am more than expecting you to write and release me unconditionally; and you _ought_ to do it. I do not say I want it. "Faithfully, at least, yours, "NELLIE. "P.S.--Should you write to Kate, you are not to tell her, remember, of my meeting with Mr. Hayne. Of course I am anxious to have your reply to that letter; but it will be five days yet."