d the sight of which made him start and breathe
heavily for a moment as if the air had suddenly grown thick and
burdensome.

Daisy's handwriting! which he had never thought to see again; for after
his engagement with Julia he had burned every vestige of a
correspondence it was sorrow now to remember. One by one, and with a
steady hand, he had dropped Daisy's letters into the fire and watched
them turning into ashes, and thought how like his love for her they were
when nothing remained of them but the thin gray tissue his breath could
blow away. The four scraps of the marriage settlement which Daisy had
brought him on that night of storm he kept, because they seemed to
embody something good and noble in the girl; but the letters she had
written him were gone past recall, and he had thought himself cut loose
from her forever--when, lo! there had come to him an awakening to the
bitterness of the past in a letter from the once-loved wife, whose
delicate handwriting made him grow faint and sick for a moment as he
held the letter in his hand and read thereon:

"GUY THORNTON, ESQ.,
Brown Cottage,
Cuylerville, Mass.
Politeness of Mr. Wilkes."

Why had she written, and what had she to say to him, he wondered, and
for a moment he felt tempted to tear the letter up and never know what
it contained.

Better, perhaps, had he done so--better for him, and better for the fond
new wife whose happiness was so perfect, and whose trust in his love so
strong.

But he did not tear it up. He opened it and read--another chapter will
tell us what he read.

CHAPTER VIII

DAISY'S LETTER

It was dated at Rouen, France, and it ran as follows:

"MAY 15, 18--.

"DEAR, DEAR GUY:--I am all alone here in Rouen; not a person
near me who speaks English or knows a thing of Daisy Thornton as she
was, or as she is now, for I am Daisy Thornton here. I have taken the
old name again, and am an English governess in a wealthy French family;
and this is how it came about: I have left Berlin and the party there
and am earning my own living for three reasons, two of which concern
cousin Tom and one of which has to do with you and that miserable
settlement which has troubled me so much. I thought when I brought it
back and tore it up that was the last of it, and did not know that by no
act of mine could I give it to you until I was of age. Father missed it,
of course, and I told him just the truth, and that I could never touch