Now
the moment had come, she was almost afraid.

She tried to imagine that letter's coming to her--then. Thirty years
ago! A May day, a day of golden sunshine and flowers. The arbors had
been covered with roses then, too, like those whose perfume drifted to
her now. Evil news flies fast, and she had heard of the duel very early
that morning. The letter would have reached her later. She would have
fled away with it to this very room to read it alone--as she did now!

With unsteady fingers she unwrapped the oiled-silk, broke the letter's
seal, and read:

"_Dearest_:

"Before you read this, you will no doubt have heard the thing
that has happened this sunshiny morning. Sassoon--poor Sassoon!
I can say that with all my heart--is dead. What this fact will
mean to you, God help me! I can not guess. For I have never
been certain, Judith, of your heart. Sometimes I have thought
you loved me--me only--as I love you. Last night when I saw you
wearing my cape jessamines at the ball, I was almost sure of
it. But when you made me promise, whatever happened, not to
lift my hand against him, then I doubted. Was it because you
feared for him? Would to God at this moment I knew this was not
true! For whatever the fact, I must love you, darling, you and
no other, as long as I live!"

When she had read thus far, she closed the letter, and pressing a hand
against her heart as if to still its throbbing, locked the written pages
in a drawer of her bureau. She went down-stairs and made Ranston bring
her chair to its accustomed place under the rose-arbor, and sat there
through the falling twilight.

She and Shirley talked but little at dinner, and what she said seemed to
come winging from old memories--her own girlhood, its routs and picnics
and harum-scarum pleasures. And there were long gaps in which she sat
silent, playing with her napkin, the light color coming and going in her
delicate cheek, lost in revery. It was not till the hall-clock struck
her usual hour that she rose to go to her room.

"Don't send Emmaline," she said. "I shan't want her." She kissed Shirley
good night. "Maybe after a while you will sing for me; you haven't
played your harp for ever so long."

In the subdued candle-light Mrs. Dandridge locked the door of her room.
She opened a closet, and from the very bottom of a small haircloth
trunk, lifted and shook out from its many tissue wrappings a f