ind of girl to yield weakly to persuasion--a line from you would have
brought me to your side, ready to defend you from any persecution, and
only too proud to claim you for my wife, and carry you away from your
father's unkindness."

The letter went on for some time in the same upbraiding strain. Ellen
shed many bitter tears over it in the quiet of her own room. It had been
delivered to her secretly by her old friend Sarah Peters, the miller's
daughter, who had been the confidante of her love affairs; for even in
his indignation Mr. Randall had been prudent enough to consider that such
a missive, falling perchance into Stephen Whitelaw's hands, might work
serious mischief.

Cruel as the letter was, Ellen could not leave it quite unanswered; some
word in her own defence she must needs write; but her reply was of the
briefest.

"There are some things that can never be explained," she wrote, "and my
marriage is one of those. No one could save me from it, you least of all.
There was no help for me; and I believe, with all my heart, that, in
acting as I did, I only did my duty. I had not the courage to write to
you beforehand to tell you what was going to be. I thought it was almost
better you should hear it from a stranger. The more hardly you think of
me, the easier it will be for you to forget me. There is some comfort in
that. I daresay it will be very easy for you to forget. But if, in days
to come, when you are happily married to some one else, you can teach
yourself to think more kindly of me, and to believe that in what I did I
acted for the best, you will be performing an act of charity towards a
poor unhappy girl, who has very little left to hope for in this world."

It was a hard thing for Ellen to think that, in the estimation of the man
she loved, she must for ever seem the basest and most mercenary of
womankind; and yet how poor an excuse could she offer in the vague
pleading of her letter! She could not so much as hint at the truth; she
could not blacken her father's character. That Frank Randall should
despise her, only made her trial a little sharper, her daily burden a
little heavier, she told herself.

With her mind full of these thoughts, she had very little sympathy to
bestow upon Mrs. Tadman, whose fragmentary lamentations only worried her,
like the murmurs of some troublesome not-to-be-pacified child; whereby
that doleful person, finding her soul growing heavier and heavier, for
lack of counsel or