"The memory of that scene yesterday will oppress me forever. Nothing could have happened that would more clearly convince you that I am unworthy of your thought. And yet it will be a life-long agony to know that I am unworthy. When I tell you that I love and honor you above all other women it is but a poor compensation, I fear, for all that I have made you suffer. My mother has KINDLY (?) informed me that she told you how feeble I am, and I proved her words true. I feel that the best service I can render you is to say, Forget me wholly; and yet you can never know what such words cost me. _I_ shall never forget, unless death is forgetting. If I had the strength to be of any help to you at all, I would break away at once and take the consequences; but I have been an invalid all my life, and why I still continue to live I scarcely know. If, however, there should ever be a time when one so weak as I am can aid you, give me this one shadowy hope that you will come to me. VINTON ARNOLD." This was Mildred's reply: "It is not in my nature to forget, therefore I cannot. It is not my wish to forget, therefore I will not. You will find me ever the same. MILDRED JOCELYN." Roger would have taken her reply to the hotel that very night, so great was her power over him, but for his sake, as well as her own, she wished to teach him once for all that their ways were apart. She dreaded from what he had said that he would follow her to the city and renew the unwelcome association of his life with hers. Therefore she engaged heavy, blundering Jotham to deliver the note, giving him a dollar from her slender purse as a reward. He lost the note where it was never found, and stolidly concealed the fact lest he should lose the dollar. The little characteristic missive fell to the earth somewhere like a seed that drops into an unkindly soil and perishes. Roger only knew that stupid Jotham had been preferred as her messenger. She made no secret of the fact, but gave the note to the laborer when he came in to his nooning the following day. She knew Roger was watching her from the front porch, and as she turned toward him she saw she had wounded him so deeply that she had some compunctions; but he avoided meeting her, nor did she find a chance to speak to him again. When, an hour later, she was ready to depart with Mr. Atwood for the distant landing, Roger was not to be found. Her conscience smote her a little, but she felt that it would be the best for him in the future, and would probably end his nonsense about leaving home and winning fame out in the world. She had a warm, genuine good-will for Mrs. Atwood and Susan, and even for poor, grumbling Mr. Atwood, at whose meagre, shrivelled life she often wondered; and it would be a source of much pain to her if she became even the blameless cause of Roger's leaving home in the absurd hope of eventually becoming great and rich, and then appearing to her in her poverty, like a prince in fairy lore.