d
solicitations which I blushed to hear, and for which you would one day
have blushed too. This parting is not forever, I hope; but that
rests with yourself. Forego your idea of vengeance on that man, whose
chastisement you would best alleviate by ending his miserable existence;
and learn to love me honorably and patiently, as I love you. Should
you obtain this great victory over yourself, you will see me again.
Meantime, think of her who loves you to distraction, and whose soul
hovers about you unseen. Pray for me, dear one, at midnight, and at
eight o'clock every morning; for those are two of the hours I shall pray
for you. Do you remember the old church, and how you cried over me? I
can write no more: my tears blind me so. Farewell. Your unhappy

"GRACE."

Little read this piteous letter, and it was a heavy blow to him; a blow
that all the tenderness shown in it could not at first soften. She had
fled from him; she shunned him. It was not from Coventry she fled; it
was from him.

He went home cold and sick at heart, and gave himself up to grief and
deep regrets for several days.

But soon his powerful and elastic mind, impatient of impotent sorrow,
and burning for some kind of action, seized upon vengeance as the only
thing left to do.

At this period he looked on Coventry as a beast in human shape, whom he
had a moral right to extinguish; only, as he had not a legal right, it
must be done with consummate art. He trusted nobody; spoke to nobody;
but set himself quietly to find out where Coventry lived, and what were
his habits. He did this with little difficulty. Coventry lodged in a
principal street, but always dined at a club, and returned home late,
walking through a retired street or two; one of these passed by the
mouth of a narrow court that was little used.

Little, disguised as a workman, made a complete reconnaissance of this
locality, and soon saw that his enemy was at his mercy.

But, while he debated within himself what measure of vengeance he should
take, and what noiseless weapon he should use, an unseen antagonist
baffled him. That antagonist was Grace Carden. Still foreboding
mischief, she wrote to Mr. Coventry, from a town two hundred miles
distant:

"Whatever you are now, you were born a gentleman, and will, I think,
respect a request from a lady you have wronged. Mr. Little has returned,
and I have left Hillsborough; if he encounters you in his despair, he
will do you some mortal inj