youth, as true, I dare say, as the first, but not so
well known to me, and I shrugged my shoulders
cynically to see my old friend once more a match-
maker. She took him to her heart and boasted of
him; like one made young herself by the great
event, she joyously dressed her pale daughter in
her bridal gown, and, with smiles upon her face,
she cast rice after the departing carriage. But soon
after it had gone, I chanced upon her in her room,
and she was on her knees in tears before the spirit
of the dead lover. "Forgive me," she besought
him, "for I am old, and life is gray to friendless
girls." The pardon she wanted was for pretending
to her daughter that women should act thus.

I am sure she felt herself soiled.

But men are of a coarser clay. At least I am, and
nearly twenty years had elapsed, and here was I
burdened under a load of affection, like a sack of
returned love-letters, with no lap into which to
dump them.

"They were all written to another woman,
ma'am, and yet I am in hopes that you will find
something in them about yourself." It would have
sounded oddly to Mary, but life is gray to friend-
less girls, and something might have come of it.

On the other hand, it would have brought her
for ever out of the wood of the little hut, and I
had but to drop the letter to send them both back
there. The easiness of it tempted me.

-93-