You must do as you think best. You know that I long for you, that the thought of your wasted life is constant pain to me. Think again, think every day, and if ever you can make up your mind to leave Mrs. Rayner, you know that I am here, that all I have is yours also. I shall say no more. So you have seen him, and he asked after me. Well. What was he doing in Homburg, I wonder? Not that I care. I really believe, Constance, that I care no longer. And yet it so happens that last night I thought of him a good deal. It came about so. Grandmamma had gone to bed, and I went into Aunt Caroline's room to light her candles. There are some little water-colours round the mirror that she painted as a girl. I stopped to look at them, and the poor soul took them down one by one to show me. There was a story attached to each, and her eyes brightened with remembrance of the past. Most of the little pictures were different views of the same house. Suddenly she gave a little smile. "Wait a minute; I'll show you another picture, Milly--my best picture." (They will call me Milly; there's no help for it.) "I have never shown it to any one before, but you are a good girl; I think I should like to show it to you." She cleared a space upon her dressing-table, lighted a third candle, a fourth, making a little illumination; then from her wardrobe she brought an old desk, and unlocked it solemnly with a key that always hangs upon her watch-chain. The desk was full of treasures,--letters, flowers, ends of ribbon, all neatly labelled. She opened a little case and placed in my hands the portrait of a young man. I hardly knew how to take it. "It is beautiful," I said; "what a handsome face!" Then the veil of silence and old age fell from her heart; she told me the whole tale. Nothing new, of course. She had loved, and--strange to say!--the man had done likewise; they were engaged, but because his family was not equal to hers in birth, her brother-in-law, my grandfather, would not hear of the match, and obliged her to break it off. Yet another sin to add to his score! "I think," said I, "that you should have married him, all the same." The old woman blew her nose, rose, and kissed me. "You are the first that ever told me so," she said; "I think so, too." It was past midnight when I left her, and I must confess that my own eyes were not dry. "Is he still alive?" I asked, as I reached the door. The old woman smiled. "I don't know," she said, "but I shall know in good time; please God we shall soon meet again in a better land."