he admissions Derek had found so fatal, and accepted her
share of all responsibility.

"Mr. Pruyn is not to blame," she wrote. "From many points of view he is
as much the victim of circumstances as I am. I have to acknowledge
myself in fault; and yet, if I were more so, my problem would be easier
to solve. There are conditions in which it is scarcely less difficult to
discern the false from the true than it is to separate the foul current
from the pure, after their streams have run together; and I cannot
reproach Mr. Pruyn if, looking only on the mingled tides, he does not
see that they flow from dissimilar sources. Though I left his house
abruptly, it was not because he drove me forth; it was rather because I
feel that, until I have regained some measure of his respect, I cannot
be worthy in his eyes--nor in my own--to be under one roof with his
daughter."

* * * * *

To Miss Lucilla, in her ignorance of the world, it seemed, as she read
on, as if the foundations of the great deep had been broken up and the
windows of heaven opened. That such things happened in romances, she had
read; that they were not unknown in real life, even in New York, she had
heard it whispered; but that they should crop up in her own immediate
circle was not less wonderful than if the night-blooming cereus had
suddenly burst into flower in her strip of garden. Miss Lucilla owned to
being shocked, to being grieved, to being puzzled, to being stunned; but
she could not deny the thrill of excitement at being caught up into the
whirl of a real love-affair.

When the first of the morning's duties in the sickroom were over she
waylaid Mrs. Eveleth in a convenient spot and told her tale. She did not
read the letter aloud, finding its phraseology at times too blunt; but,
with those softening circumlocutions of which good women have the
secret, she conveyed the facts. There was but one short passage which
she quoted just as Diane had written it:

"'I am sure my mother-in-law will stand by me, and bear me out. She
alone knows the sort of life I led with her son, and I am convinced that
she will see justice done me.'"

Mrs. Eveleth listened silently, with the still look of pain that belongs
to those growing old in the expectation of misfortune.

"I've been afraid something would happen," was her only comment.

"But surely, dear Mrs. Eveleth, you don't think any of it can be true!"

The elder woman began moving tow