rl most
sincerely, when I think of her youth and her wretched past life. How it
will end I cannot presume to say. I can only acknowledge that I do not
look to the future with the absolute despair which you naturally felt
when I last saw you."

Mrs. Presty laid the letter down, privately resolving to write to
Randal, and tell him to keep his convictions for the future to himself.
A glance at her daughter's face warned her, if she said anything, to
choose a new subject.

The second letter still remained unnoticed. "Shall we see what the
lawyer says?" she suggested--and opened the envelope. The lawyer had
nothing to say. He simply inclosed a letter received at his office.

Mrs. Presty had long passed the age at which emotion expresses itself
outwardly by a change of color. She turned pale, nevertheless, when she
looked at the second letter.

The address was in Herbert Linley's handwriting.

Chapter XXIV. Hostility.

When she was not eating her meals or asleep in her bed, absolute silence
on Mrs. Presty's part was a circumstance without precedent in the
experience of her daughter. Mrs. Presty was absolutely silent now. Mrs.
Linley looked up.

She at once perceived the change in her mother's face and asked what
it meant. "Mamma, you look as if something had frightened you. Is it
anything in that letter?" She bent over the table, and looked a little
closer at the letter. Mrs. Presty had turned it so that the address was
underneath; and the closed envelope was visible still intact. "Why don't
you open it?" Mrs. Linley asked.

Mrs. Presty made a strange reply. "I am thinking of throwing it into the
fire."

"My letter?"

"Yes; your letter."

"Let me look at it first."

"You had better not look at it, Catherine."

Naturally enough, Mrs. Linley remonstrated. "Surely I ought to read a
letter forwarded by my lawyer. Why are you hiding the address from me?
Is it from some person whose handwriting we both know?" She looked again
at her silent mother--reflected--and guessed the truth. "Give it to me
directly," she said; "my husband has written to me."

Mrs. Presty's heavy eyebrows gathered into a frown. "Is it possible,"
she asked sternly, "that you are still fond enough of that man to care
about what he writes to you?" Mrs. Linley held out her hand for the
letter. Her wise mother found it desirable to try persuasion next. "If
you really won't give way, my dear, humor me for once. Will you let me
read it to yo