“‘Is there anything here at home which you would especially desire me to send you? I imagine you will prefer to make Forest City your permanent home, and I would suggest that you keep Tibby with you as long as possible. Your harp and piano I have already had boxed awaiting your order. And now, dear Nellie, I hope you will accept this trial in the right spirit, believing it for the best, as I do. It has been a trial, also, to me, I assure you, but it has seemed a duty, if not an actual necessity. “‘Very affectionately yours, “‘HORACE WYLIE.’ “The man is certainly insane, or—” “Infatuated with some other woman,” interrupted Alice as Mark hesitated. “I will never believe that,” said Elinor pathetically. “I shall write to him. Yes, I must write to him. This seems so unreal, I am constantly feeling as though I should awaken and find it but a painful dream.” “Yes, write to him by all means, and learn, if possible, the cause of this change of heart.” “I’ve been wondering where I should address him. You know his partner wired me that he had started for New York. You don’t think he could have gone through east, already?” “I will go to town to-day and telegraph Johnson,” Mark responded. He did so, and received this reply: “Wylie left San Francisco for New York, the eighth instant, in company with his wife.” “‘Oh, my prophetic soul!’” quoted Alice, when she heard it, and Tibby nodded assent. “I know it is that woman of the boat. My instincts did not deceive me,” she said. How Elinor lived through the next fortnight she could never have told. She remained as one stunned, and unable to talk to any one. She would lie on the couch for hours and not move, or sit under the canopy of the doorway, her hands lying listlessly in her lap, her sad eyes staring pathetically into space. When spoken to she would arouse herself with a start, and look at her friends with so pitiful an expression in her blue eyes that they would turn away to hide their tears of sympathy. She ate only when urged to do so, and slept only when forced to do so by Tibby. “If we could only interest her in something,” Alice said over and over, for she scarcely even noticed little Robbie. At last Lissa came in one day, bringing her herbarium of Nebraska flowers. “This was a God-send to me,” she said, “when I was brooding over my sorrow. Perhaps I can interest Mrs. Wylie in it.” “O, how much you have done with it,” cried Tibby, “since the time when you and I made our first botanical excursion together.” “You drew my attention from the dead to the living, growing things about me, Tibby, dear, and I can never thank you enough,” Lissa replied.