He rose impatiently and left the room. Cecil looked after him angrily, knowing well that he was going straight to Molly. “Confound the fellow! What has come over him to meddle like this in my affairs?” he thought. Phebe opened the door gladly enough at his knock. She was getting worried over Molly, who had refused to speak one word since she had read that letter written in the height of Cecil’s resentful passion. She was sitting, or rather, crouched, in a forlorn attitude upon the bed, her arms clasped around her knees, her curly hair falling in disheveled masses round her face and neck, her eyes staring gloomily into vacancy, her face pale and drawn with despair. Doctor Charley went up and spoke to her, but she did not answer nor look at him any more than if she had been a statue. “What is it, Phebe?” he asked, distressedly, and the maid answered: “Mr. Cecil handed me a letter to give her, and she’s been like that ever since she read it.” He saw then that her hands were shut tight over a crushed letter, and tried gently to take it away, but she clung to it with convulsive strength. Charley did not relish deceit and duplicity any better than Cecil did, and in his heart he knew that the girl had done wrong; but her trouble, her grief, her sad situation had aroused all the chivalry in his nature, and, profoundly moved, he exclaimed: “Do not look so wretched, little sister. You are not quite friendless while Phebe and I are left to you. Come turn your eyes on mine, dear, and tell me what they have done to grieve you so.” As if touched to the heart by his loving tone, Molly flashed her eyes upon his with a world of passion in them, and, opening wide her little hand, flung the letter at his feet. “There, take it--your brother’s wedding gift to me;” she cried in concentrated scorn, bitterness, and anguish. He knew that she meant him to read it, and after he had done so he stood silent before her dumbly questioning eyes knowing not what to say. “Well,” she said, at last, and laughed low and strangely--so strangely that it chilled his blood, “well, Doctor Charley, what do you say about winning him back now?” The words roused him into action. He shook himself free from the indignant silence in which he had been contemplating his brother’s cruelty, and coming close to her took both her hands in his. He knew that he must put some hope into that agonized young heart or she would die or go mad of this awful shock. In that low, strange laugh had sounded the echo of incipient madness. “My brother was cruel, very cruel, I can not deny that, dear Molly,” he said, sadly, feeling ashamed of Cecil for his hardness when the girl was so low and ill. She clung to him like a child, and said, in a strained whisper: “You see I sent Phebe to bring him to me. I wanted to explain--all. He would not listen--he went away--and sent me _that_!” her eye indicating the letter with a glance of infinite loathing.