"MY DEAR, DEAR BOY: If I had not been a coward, if I had been, in anything, worthy of all your tenderness, your goodness, and your love for me, I might have faced you, and told you what you will here find written, and trusted to your mercy. I think now that if you were here, and held my hands and looked into my eyes with those deep, honest eyes of yours, I could not do what I must do--I could not leave you. God knows what a long and bitter fight it has been; how I have told myself, again and again, that you were the best man on earth, and that nothing should change my love for you. Believe that I meant that always; believe that I have tried, with prayers and tears, to shut everything else out. When first I met you, after we had grown to be man and woman, I carried something in my heart of which I dared not speak--the love of another man. On the first night that I ran down to meet you in the garden I thought he had come back to me. Now he has come back indeed, and all my world is changed, and I can cheat myself and you no longer. He is poor, and friendless, and helpless, but he will one day be a great man; and I, though I am but a poor, timid girl, can help him a little to his greatness as no one else can possibly do. If I am a coward, in running away and fearing to face you, forgive that, as you have forgiven so much else. We go to London this afternoon; we shall be married to-morrow. Something is tugging hard at my heart while I write this; you have been always so good to me that I seem to see you reading it. Forgive me; if you can find it in your big heart to do that, you will not quite forget-- "Your friend, "'LINDA." He read it all through slowly, in a dazed fashion, and then quietly folded the paper, pleating it up small in his fingers and staring down at it. Mrs. Dawson had drawn nearer to him, and now laid her hand on his arm. He looked round at her like some great helpless animal that has been wounded, and can not understand why the blow should have been struck. "Something is wrong. What has happened?" she asked, in a quick whisper. "She--she's gone!" he said. Then came the quick instinct, the very dawning of a purpose he was to keep so clearly before him afterward, that she must be protected; that her good name must be held high and clear in all men's sight, that none might smirch it. He actually forced a laugh to his lips as he thrust the paper into his pocket. "There--there's nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all; you needn't look so frightened. It's only--only a little love story--a love story none of us guessed. Curious, isn't it? She tells me here as--as an old friend, that she's run away--there, don't cry out--she's run away to get married. That's all." "To get married! But who is the man? Are you sure that he----"