“Bee, these have been sent back to me. Was it by your will? I have been here since ever I heard of her illness, longing to be with you, to tell you what I felt for her and you. And you would not speak to me! Bee, dearest, say you did not mean it. Tell me what I am to do. “A.L.” How long the woman was in getting ready--how long in going! Before she came back it was almost night again of the lingering, endless day. She brought him a little note, not returning the enclosures--that was always something--with a reproach. “Oh, sir, and you very near got me into terrible trouble! I’ll never, never carry anything from you again.” The note was still shorter than his own:-- “It was not by my will. I have never seen them till now. But please--please let this be the last. We can’t meet again. There can never more be anything between us--not from my father’s will, but my own. And this for ever--and your own heart will tell you why. “BEE.” “My own heart will tell me why! My heart tells me nothing--nothing!” poor Aubrey said to himself in the silence of his little room. But there was little use in repeating it to himself, and there was no other ear to hear. CHAPTER VII. IT was with a sort of stupified bewilderment that Aubrey read over and over the little letter of Bee’s. Letter! To call it a letter. Those straggling lines without any beginning, no name of him to whom they were addressed, nothing even of the most superficial courtesy, nothing that marked the link that had been--unless it were, perhaps, the abruptness, the harshness, which she would have used to no other. This was a kind of painful comfort in its way, when he came to think of it. To nobody but him would she have written so--this was the little gleam of light. And she had retained his letters, though she had forbidden him from sending more. These lights of consolation leaped into his mind with the first reading, but the more he repeated that reading, the darker grew the prospect, and the less comfort they gave him. “Not by my father’s will, but my own; and your own heart will tell you why.” What did she mean by his own heart? She had begun to write conscience, and then drew her pen through it. Conscience! What had he done? What had he done? The real trouble of his life Bee had forgiven. Her father had stood upon it, and nothing had changed his standing ground so far as the Colonel was concerned; but Bee, who did not understand--how should any girl understand?--had forgiven him, had flung his reproach away and accepted him as he was. How was it that she should thus go back on her decision now? “Not my father’s will, but mine. And your conscience will tell you why.” Aubrey’s conscience reproached him with nothing, with no thought of unfaithfulness to the young and spotless love which had re-created his being. He had never denied the old reproach. But what was it, what