her troubles came thick and fast upon her in those days.
When she reached home, there was the letter which Ephraim had left
on the table addressed in the familiar, upright handwriting, and when
Cynthia saw it, she caught her hand sharply at her breast, as if the
pain there had stopped the beating of her heart. Well it was for Bob's
peace of mind that he could not see her as she read it, and before she
had come to the end there were drops on the sheets where the purple ink
had run. How precious would have been those drops to him! He would
never give her up. No mandate or decree could separate them--nothing
but death. And he was happier now so he told her--than he had been for
months: happy in the thought that he was going out into the world to win
bread for her, as became a man. Even if he had not her to strive for, he
saw now that such was the only course for him. He could not conform.

It was a manly letter,--how manly Bob himself never knew. But Cynthia
knew, and she wept over it and even pressed it to her lips--for there
was no one to see. Yes, she loved him as she would not have believed it
possible to love, and she sat through the afternoon reading his words
and repeating them until it seemed that he were there by her side,
speaking them. They came, untrammelled and undefiled, from his heart
into hers.

And now that he had quarrelled with his father for her sake, and was
bent with all the determination of his character upon making his own way
in the world, what was she to do? What was her duty? Not one letter
of the twoscore she had received (so she kept their count from day to
day)--not one had she answered. His faith had indeed been great. But
she must answer this: must write, too, on that subject of her dismissal,
lest it should be wrongly told him. He was rash in his anger, and
fearless; this she knew, and loved him for such qualities as he had.

She must stay in Brampton and do her work,--so much was clearly her
duty, although she longed to flee from it. And at last she sat down and
wrote to him. Some things are too sacred to be set forth on a printed
page, and this letter is one of those things. Try as she would, she
could not find it in her heart at such a time to destroy his hope,--or
her own. The hope which she would not acknowledge, and the love which
she strove to conceal from him seeped up between the words of her letter
like water through grains of sand. Words, indeed, are but as grains of
sand to c