"Dear Gilbert," he read. Instantly he was alarmed, for this was not the way she generally began her letters to him. "I have changed my mind," ran the words; his alarm increased. But when he next came to the words, "Our engagement must be broken off. I intend marrying Mr. Bennet," a feeling of stupefaction overcame him. He read the short letter over and over again in a mechanical sort of way, hardly taking in its meaning. "'I have changed my mind,'" he repeated to himself. "'Our engagement must be broken off. I intend marrying Mr. Bennet.'" The thing was so sudden that at first it stunned him--he could not believe it. But there it was in black and white, in Kitty's own writing. "I have changed my mind!" There was no mistaking that. "Our engagement must be broken off. I intend marrying Mr. Bennet," she wrote. These were her words, and there was no getting away from them. So everything was at an end between them! More than that, Kitty was to marry Bennet! With a sudden movement of anguish and rage, Gilbert crumpled the letter in his hand and threw it from him. He sat for a while staring out of his window, while his mind began to work with incredible swiftness. Kitty had jilted him--for Bennet! But Gilbert knew the girl very well, and the first movements of grief, anger, pain, and amazement past, he tried to think the matter out calmly, with the result that he passionately told himself Kitty was no jilt, and there must be something astounding behind her letter. Then he picked up the crumpled sheet of paper from the floor, smoothed it out, and read its contents once more. But there was neither light nor comfort to be got from them. What could be the explanation of her extraordinary conduct? he wondered, for of course there must be some explanation. Kitty was no shallow flirt, no woman of mere caprice. Why had she done this? But did her letter afford no hint? She had not only thrown him over, but she announced she was to marry Bennet--Bennet, of all people in the world! Had she not warned him against this very man? And now she was to marry him! Why? As Gilbert sat in his room endeavouring to solve this problem, it seemed to him that he heard Kitty's rich voice saying in low and sincere accents the words--almost the last she had uttered when they were together by the river-side three evenings before, "I feel as if I could not exist without you now, Gilbert." What could have brought about this mighty change? What sinister, malign influence had cast its spell over her? As he thought and thought, it appeared to him plain enough that the girl's change of mind must associate itself in some way with Bennet. "Yet," said he to himself, "I know she loves me even as I love her. She does not love Bennet, whom she declares she now intends to marry. What pressure, in Heaven's name, can Bennet have brought to bear on her? Pressure there must have been, and of the strongest kind, otherwise she would never dream of marrying him. What can it be?"