ng to receive
the letters by return, I am, yours truly,

ROBERT TROJAN.

9 SEA VIEW TERRACE, PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
_October_ 14, 1906.

Dear Mr. Trojan--Thank you for the locket, the ring, and the letters
which I have received. I regret that I must decline to part with the
letters; surely it is not strange that I should wish to keep
them.--Yours truly, DAHLIA FEVEREL.

"THE FLUTES,"
_October_ 15, 1906.

What do you mean? You have no right to them. They are mine. I wrote
them. You serve no purpose by keeping them. Please return them at
once--by return. I have done nothing to deserve this. Unless you
return them, I shall know that you are merely an intriguing--; no, I
don't mean that. Please send them back. Suppose they should be
seen?--In haste, R. T.

9 SEA VIEW TERRACE, PENDRAGON, CORNWALL,
_October_ 15, 1906.

My decision is unalterable.

D. F.

But Dahlia sat in the dreary little drawing-room watching the grey sea
with a white face and hard, staring eyes.

She had sat there all day. She thought that soon she would go mad.
She had not slept since her last meeting with Robin; she had scarcely
eaten--she was too tired to think.

The days had been interminable. At first she had waited, expecting
that he would come back. A hundred impulses had been at work. At
first she had thought that she would go and tell him that she had not
meant what she said; she would persuade him to come back, She would
offer him the letters and tell him that she had meant nothing--they had
been idle words. But then she remembered some of the things that he
had said, some of the stones that he had flung. She was not good
enough for him or his family; she had no right to expect that an
alliance was ever possible. His family despised her. And then her
thoughts turned from Robin to his family. She had seen Clare often
enough and had always disliked her. But now she hated her so that she
could have gladly killed her. It was at her door that she laid all the
change in Robin and her own misery. She felt that she would do
anything in the world to cause her pain. She brooded over it in the
shabby little room with her face turned to the sea. How could she hurt
her? There were the others, too--the rest of the family--all except
Robin's father, who was, she felt instinctively, different. She
thought that he would not have acted in that way. And then her
thoughts turned back to Robin, and for