“I need not rehearse the story of my courtship and marriage--you are familiar with that, and you know that I have been very contented and happy, except that ever since I have known Mateel, I have noticed an indifference which often humiliated me, but which I have excused for a hundred reasons, and tried to think little of. The letter which I will shortly ask you to read explains it all, and it is this which has changed me into a wicked, worthless man, without hope or ambition. The letter was written by Mateel to Clinton Bragg, when she was his promised wife, before they came to Fairview, and I received it by mail, addressed in a strange hand, six weeks ago yesterday, on an evening when I was planning for the future, and when I was in unusual good spirits. That she had been engaged to Bragg I never knew, nor did I suspect it, for although I knew they were brought up in the same neighborhood, and had been children together, the thought never occurred to me that they had been lovers, for he is more fit for a hangman’s rope than for an honest woman’s regard. I know now that Mateel has never loved me as the letter indicates she loved the most contemptible man I ever knew; a hundred times I have wondered if there were no better lovers in the world than Mateel, but I have found that the trouble was that she had drained her heart dry in loving my enemy, and that there was none left for me. This is what has wounded my pride, and broken my spirits, and left me a useless wreck.” He took from an inner pocket and handed me an envelope, and taking from it the letter, I began to read aloud. “Read it to yourself,” he said. “I am familiar with it.” The letter was closely written, and read as follows:-- “MY BRAVE LOVER,--I write to-night to tell you for the hundredth time how much I love you. When you are away from me, I have no other pleasure than this, for it brings you to me to receive my kisses and embraces. Once you came in the middle of the day following the night I wrote you, and if you come to-morrow, and sincerely believe and never forget what I have to say, this letter will have accomplished its mission. “What I want to say is (and I write it after a great deal of serious deliberation) that if by an unlucky chance we should never be married, I should still love you as I do now, forever. I love you so much that I am anxious you should know that even though I believed you had forgotten me, and I became the wife of some one else, because all women are expected to marry, I should continue to think of you as I do now, the only man worthy of my love in all the world; and every night after my husband had gone to sleep, I would put my arms around him, and imagine that it was you, and that you would waken soon, and love me as I am sure you do this night.