“She will need more than kindness--she will need real motherly tenderness and sympathy, for she is nervous and troubled over the shock she has given her father, and is likely to be very unhappy for some time. You will know how to comfort her, will you not, dear mother?” His voice was so eager and anxious that she answered yes, promising her heart to do her duty by Rolfe’s wife, in spite of her secret resentment for poor Mae’s sake. When he had left the house she returned to the parlor, and found Viola still sleeping so soundly that she had not the heart to rouse her yet. She drew up a chair and waited awhile, gazing admiringly at the beautiful creature. Presently Viola stirred restlessly, sighed, and opened her large dreamy eyes upon the unfamiliar scene, and the strange face of her mother-in-law. “Oh!” she uttered, in a dazed voice, sitting quickly erect. “Do not be alarmed, my dear, you have fallen asleep in your chair and been dreaming. You are here in Rolfe’s home safe with his mother,” said the lady, gently. A gleam of comprehension flashed into Viola’s eyes, and she sighed heavily: “I remember--everything.” “I have a bit of sad news for you, my dear.” “Yes?” inquiringly. The answer was a sealed letter. Viola took it in surprise, and opened it, reading with dilated eyes: “MY PRECIOUS WIFE,--I mentioned to you tonight that I had an offer to go to Cuba as a war correspondent for a newspaper, and I find it almost necessary to go to New York tonight to make the requisite arrangements for immediate departure. “This happens very fortunately for you under the circumstances. “You will not be compelled to assume as yet the duties of a wifehood that would be repugnant to you now, though I hope at some future day to teach your heart the sweet lesson of love. Am I presumptuous? “We must keep up the farce of love--no farce on my part--to blind the world, and make it believe in the honesty of the _coup d’état_ by which you came out of the affair with Desha with flying colors. Do not lay aside for a moment the pretense that the force of love alone caused your elopement. “Above all, spare my gentle mother any knowledge of the real truth. It will not take much acting to please her gentle heart with the fancy that I am dear to you. May the fancy some day become reality. “I have dared kiss you good-bye as you slept. I hope you will rest easy till my return tomorrow evening. I will give orders for the morning papers to be sent you. “Devotedly, ROLFE.” Viola read the short letter slowly and lingeringly, and then thrust it into her bosom. The woman who watched her saw her lips quiver, and said, tenderly: “I told Rolfe it was hard for him to go tonight, but he seemed to think you would not blame him, dear.”