“Read that letter, and see what an accursed thing you have done in sundering two fond hearts!” thundered the irate father, thrusting a letter into his hand. Rolfe Maxwell flushed proudly at Judge Van Lew’s overbearing manner, but he took the offered letter in silence, and perused it with eager eyes. And the angry father, watching him closely, saw the proud lips under the dark, silken mustache whiten to a bluish pallor, and the light of the flashing eyes grow dim, while the hand that handed back the fatal letter trembled as with an ague chill. There was a brief, chilling silence, broken at last by the judge: “Viola came home to me this morning, Mr. Maxwell, and confessed everything that happened last night; the reception of this letter from Mr. Desha, avowing his repentance and begging that the marriage should go on today, nearly broke the poor girl’s heart.” Rolfe Maxwell looked at the speaker, asking, abruptly: “And she would have forgiven him--taken him back?” “Can you doubt it? She made too much of a lovers’ quarrel in the first place, and she ought to have known he would repent before today, as he did, for his letter was sent at the first peep of dawn. Now you can realize what your officious intermeddling has done!” The young man could not refrain from answering, bitterly: “Then you call it officious intermeddling to have saved your daughter from the violent death she sought in her frantic despair of life?” Judge Van Lew bit his lip, and flushed at the slight reminder, answering: “No; we both owe you a debt of gratitude for that brave deed, and we should owe you more if you had persuaded Viola to come home and be reasonable, instead of luring her into that unsuitable marriage.” “Did your daughter accuse me of luring her into that marriage?” The words dropped coldly from the young man’s lips, and the judge fidgeted under his anxious scrutiny as he retorted: “I am using my own words, not Viola’s; but still I am keeping to the letter of what she told me. Of course she is bitterly sorry now that she is bound to you, and you must realize that yourself.” Yes, Rolfe Maxwell realized it with a sinking heart. In his love and his sympathy he had eagerly lent himself to her frantic plans for staving off the humiliation of tomorrow, and this was the way it had all ended--in regret and despair for Viola, remorse and pain for himself. Speech failed him. He could only stare mutely at his accuser, taking to himself all the blame of last night, shielding Viola by his silence. He had been eager to lay his heart at her feet, he knew. But she had just as eagerly accepted it, and thanked him for the offer. “It is not for me to tell her father the truth. The blame be mine,” he thought, loyal to his love. Judge Van Lew continued, harshly: “I do not wish to censure your action too severely, for I remember, while I blame you for that marriage, that you saved her life. Yet I am obliged to tell you that those bonds must be broken.”