it malarial? On the boat your aunt asked me to come,
but you said nothing about it, and I was left to suppose that you did
not think it would agree with me. Do you still think so? or what do you
think? I know you think it was uncalled for and in extremely bad taste
for me to tell you what I did the other day; and I have thought so too.
There is only one thing that could justify it--that is, I think it might
justify it--if you thought so. But I do not feel sure that you would
like to know it, or, if you knew it, would like it. I've been rather
slow coming to the conclusion myself, and perhaps it's only the
beginning of the end; and not the conclusion--if there is such a
difference. But the question now is whether I may come and tell you what
I think it is--justify myself, or make things worse than they are now.
I don't know that they can be worse, but I think I should like to try. I
think your presence would inspire me.

"Washington is a wilderness since Miss--Van Hook left. It is not a
howling wilderness simply because it has not enough left in it to howl;
but it has all the other merits of a wilderness.

"Yours sincerely,

"D. F. MAVERING."

After a second perusal of this note, Miss Anderson recurred to the other
letter which she had neglected for it, and read it with eyes from which
the tears slowly fell upon it. Then she sat a long time at her table
with both letters before her, and did not move, except to take her
handkerchief out of her pocket and dry her eyes, from which the tears
began at once to drip again. At last she started forward, and caught pen
and paper toward her, biting her lip and frowning as if to keep herself
firm, and she said to the central figure in the photograph case which
stood at the back of the table, "I will, I will! You are a man, anyway."

She sat down, and by a series of impulses she wrote a letter, with which
she gave herself no pause till she put it in the clerk's hands, to whom
she ran downstairs with it, kicking her skirt into wild whirls as she
ran, and catching her foot in it and stumbling.

"Will it go--go to-night?" she demanded tragically.

"Just in time," said the clerk, without looking up, and apparently not
thinking that her tone betrayed any unusual amount of emotion in a lady
posting a letter; he was used to intensity on such occasions.

The letter ran--

"DEAR MR. MAVERING,--We shall now be here so short a time that I do not
think it advisable for you to come.