ink I am dying for love, do you? But no! It
is pride--only pride! Why did I not always scorn that pitiful boy? I did
once, and he knows it. And afterwards, because there was no one else
to care for, and I was lonely, and wanted a home--haughty, and wanted a
position--I have humbled myself thus."

"Then, Christal, if you never did really love him"----

"Who told you that? Not I!" she cried, her broken and contradictory
speech revealing the chaos of her mind.

"I say, I did love him--more than you, with your cold prudence, could
ever dream of! What could such an one as you know about love? Yet you
have taken him from me.

"I tell you, no! Never till this day did he breathe one word of love to
me. I can show you his letters."

"Letters! He wrote to you, then, and I never knew it. Oh! how I hate
you! I could kill you where you stand!"

She went to the open desk, and began searching there with trembling
hands.

"What--what are you going to do?" cried Olive, with sudden terror.

"To take his letters, and read them. I do it in your presence, for I
am no dishonourable thief. But I will know everything. You are in my
power--you need not stir or shriek."

But Olive did shriek, for she saw that Christal's hand already touched
the one fatal letter. A hope there was that she might pass it by,
unconscious that it contained her doom! But no! her eye had been
attracted by her own name, mentioned in the postscript.

"More wicked devices against me!" cried the girl, passionately. "But I
will find out this plot too," and she began to unfold the paper.

"The letter--give me that letter. Oh, Christal! for the happiness of
your whole life, I charge you--I implore you not to read it!" cried
Olive, springing forward, and catching her arm. But Christal thrust her
back with violence. "'Tis something you wish to hide from me; but I defy
you! I _will_ read!"

Nevertheless, in the confusion of her mind, she could not at once find
the passage where she had seen her own name. She began, and read the
letter all through, though without a change of countenance until she
reached the end. Then the change was so awful, none could be like it,
save that left by death on the human face. Her arms fell paralysed, and
she staggered dizzily against the wall.

Trembling, Olive crept up and touched her; Christal recoiled, and
stamped on the ground, crying:

"It is all a lie, a hideous lie! _You_ have forged it--to shame me in
the eyes of my lover.