nk that he has inspired any
greater interest in him. They are all kind, all very attentive. I have
told you how well Mr. Royce dances and Mr. Merton rides and Mr. Foster
reads and talks. They entertain me vastly, and I _do_ like it. More than
this, Steven, I am pleased with their evident admiration,--not alone
pleased and proud that they should admire me who am pledged to you,--not
that alone, I frankly confess, but because it in itself is pleasant. It
pleases me. Very possibly it is because I am vain.

"And yet, though my hours are constantly occupied, though they are here
from morning till night, no one of them is more attentive than another.
There are five or six who come daily. There are some who do not come at
all. Am I a wretch, Steven? There are two or three that do not call who
I wish _would_ call. I would like to know them.

"Yet they know--they could not help it, with Kate here, and I never
forget--that I am your promised wife. Steven, do you not sometimes
forget the conditions of that promise? Even now, again and again do I
not repeat to you that you ought to release me and free yourself? Of
course your impulse will be to say my heart is changing,--that I have
seen others whom I like better. No, I have seen no one I like as well.
But _is_ 'like' what you deserve,--what you ask? and is it not all I
have ever been able to promise you? Steven, bear me witness, for Kate is
bitterly unjust to me at times, I told you again and again last summer
and fall that I did not love you and ought not to think of being your
wife. Yet, poor, homeless, dependent as I am, how strong was the
temptation to say yes to your plea! You know that I did not and would
not until time and again your sweet mother, whom I _do_ love, and Kate,
who had been a mother to me, both declared that _that_ should make no
difference: the love would come: the happiest marriages the world over
were those in which the girl respected the man of her choice: love would
come, and come speedily, when once she was his wife. You yourself
declared you could wait in patience,--you would woo and win by and by.
Only promise to be your wife before returning to the frontier, and you
would be content. Steven, _are_ you content? You know you are not: you
know you are unhappy; and it is all, not because I am growing to love
some one else, but because I am not growing to love you. Heaven knows I
want to love you; for so long as you hold me to it my promise is sacred
and