me round to find out about Lily," said Mrs. Elmore.
"The Andersens were a mere blind."

"Oh, Mrs. Elmore!" cried Lily in deprecation.

The bell jangled. "That is the postman," said Mrs. Elmore.

There was a home-letter for Lily, and one from Lily's sister enclosed to
Mrs. Elmore. The ladies rent them open, and lost themselves in the
cross-written pages; and neither of them saw the dismay with which
Elmore looked at the handwriting of the envelope addressed to him. His
wife vaguely knew that he had a letter, and meant to ask him for it as
soon as she should have finished her own. When she glanced at him again,
he was staring at the smiling face of Miss Mayhew, as she read her
letter, with the wild regard of one who sees another in mortal peril,
and can do nothing to avert the coming doom, but must dumbly await the
catastrophe.

"What is it, Owen?" asked his wife in a low voice.

He started from his trance, and struggled to answer quietly. "I've a
letter here which I suppose I'd better show to you first."

They rose and went into the next room, Miss Mayhew following them with a
bright, absent look, and then dropping her eyes again to her letter.

Elmore put the note he had received into his wife's hands without a
word.

SIR,--My position permitted me to take a woman. I am a soldier, but
I am an engineer--operateous, and I can exercise wherever my
profession in the civil life. I have seen Miss Mayhew, and I have
great sympathie for she. I think I will be lukely with her, if Miss
Mayhew would be of the same intention of me.

If you believe, Sir, that my open and realy proposition will not
offendere Miss Mayhew, pray to handed to her this note. Pray sir to
excuse me the liberty to fatigue you, and to go over with silence
if you would be of another intention.

Your obedient servant,
E. VON EHRHARDT.

Mrs. Elmore folded the letter carefully up and returned it to her
husband. If he had perhaps dreaded some triumphant outburst from her, he
ought to have been content with the thoroughly daunted look which she
lifted to his, and the silence in which she suffered him to do justice
to the writer.

"This is the letter of a gentleman, Celia," he said.

"Yes," she responded faintly.

"It puts another complexion on the affair entirely."

"Yes. Why did he wait a whole week?" she added.

"It is