let time go by, some one else may slip in. Who can tell?
I would not be thought to press indecently, but I do feel
that here the ordinary rules which govern men and women
are not to be followed. He made her unhappy almost from
the first day. She had made a mistake which you and she
and all acknowledged. She has been punished; and so have
I,--very severely I can assure you. Wouldn't it be a good
thing to bring all this to an end as soon as possible,--if
it can be brought to an end in the way I want?

Pray tell me what you think. I would propose that you
should ask her to see me, and then say just as much as you
please. Of course I should not press her at first. You
might ask me to dinner, and all that kind of thing, and so
she would get used to me. It is not as though we had not
been very, very old friends. But I know you will do the
best. I have put off writing to you till I sometimes think
that I shall go mad over it if I sit still any longer.

Your affectionate friend,

ARTHUR FLETCHER.

When Mr. Wharton got this letter he was very much puzzled. Could he
have had his wish, he too would have left the chasm behind him as
proposed by his young friend, and have never cast an eye back upon
the frightful abyss. He would willingly have allowed the whole Lopez
incident to be passed over as an episode in their lives, which, if it
could not be forgotten, should at any rate never be mentioned. They
had all been severely punished, as Fletcher had said, and if the
matter could end there he would be well content to bear on his own
shoulders all that remained of that punishment, and to let everything
begin again. But he knew very well it could not be so with her. Even
yet it was impossible to induce Emily to think of her husband without
regret. It had been only too manifest during the last year of their
married life that she had felt horror rather than love towards him.
When there had been a question of his leaving her behind, should he
go to Central America, she had always expressed herself more than
willing to comply with such an arrangement. She would go with him
should he order her to do so, but would infinitely sooner remain
in England. And then, too, she had spoken of him while alive with
disdain and disgust, and had submitted to hear her father describe
him as infamous. Her life had been one long misery, under which she
had seemed gradually to be perishing. Now sh