your nasty letter, putting me second to your
mother." And she laughed, and was still laughing, when she added: "So,
you see, I was determined to marry you."

"I do," said I dryly. "I suppose I ought to feel flattered."

"No, you oughtn't," she retorted. "I simply made up my mind to marry
you. And I'd do it, no matter what it cost. I get _that_ from father.
But I've got mother's disposition, too--and that makes me far too good
for such a cold, unsentimental, ambitious person as you."

"Don't you think you're rather rash to confess so frankly--when I could
still escape?"

"Not at all," was her confident answer. "I know you, and so I know
nothing could make you break your word."

"There's some truth in that,"--and I hope that I do not deceive myself
in thinking I was honest there. "More truth, perhaps, than you guess."

She looked shrewdly at me--and friendlily. "Don't be too sure I haven't
guessed," said she. "Nobody's ever so blind as he lets others think.
It's funny, isn't it? There are things in your mind that you'd never
tell me, and things in my mind that I'd never tell you. And each of us
guesses most of them, without ever letting on." She laughed queerly, and
struck the horse smartly so that he leaped into a gait at which
conversation was impossible.

When we resumed, the subject was the details of our wedding.

At home again, I found my mother too ill to leave her bed. She had been
ill before,--many times when she wouldn't confess it, several times when
she was forced to admit it, but never before so ill that she could not
dress and come down stairs. "I shall be up to-morrow," she assured me,
and I almost believed her. She drew a letter from under her pillow.
"This came while you were away," she went on. "I kept it here,
because--" a look of shame flitted across her face, and then her eyes
were steady and proud again,--"why should I be ashamed of it? I had the
impulse to destroy the letter, and I'm not sure but that I'm failing in
my duty."

I took it,--yes, it was from Boston, from Betty. I opened it and
fortunately had nerved myself against showing myself to my mother. There
was neither beginning nor end, just a single sentence:

"From the bottom of my broken heart I am thankful that I have been
spared the horror of discovering I had bound myself for life to a
coward."

The shot went straight to the center of the target. But----There lay my
mother--did _she_ not have the right to determine my desti