known each other like that--like brother and
sister. But not particularly like brother and sister--like cousins twice
removed, which is a more interesting tie in some particulars. And now
for the letter.

"MY DEAR OLD JOHN: I want to tell you myself of a great thing that has
happened to me--the very greatest thing that could happen in one's
life. Oh, John, dear old John, I feel as if I had nobody else I could
open my heart to; for mamma--well, mamma is mamma, a dear mother and a
good one; but you know she has her own ways of thinking----"

He put down the letter again with a rueful little laugh. "And have not I
my own ways of thinking, too?" he said to himself.

"Jack dear," continued the letter, "you must give me your sympathy, all
your sympathy. You never were in love, I suppose (oh, what an odious
way that is of putting it! but it spares one's feelings a little, for
even in writing it is too tremendous a thing to say quite gravely and
seriously, as one feels it). Dear John, I know you never were in love,
or you would have told me; but still----"

"Oh," he said to himself, with the merest suspicion of a little quiver
in his lip, which might, of course, have been a laugh, but, on the other
hand, might have been something else, "I never was--or I would have told
her--That's the way she looks at it." Then he took up the letter again.

"Because--I see nothing but persecution before me. It was only a week
ago that it happened, and we wanted to keep it quiet for a time; but
things get out in spite of all one can do--things of that sort, at
least. And, oh, dear Jack, fancy! I have got three letters already, all
warning me against him; raking up trifling things that have occurred
long ago, long before he met me, and holding them up before me like
scarecrows--telling me he is not worthy of me, and that I will be
wretched if I marry him, and other dreadful lies like that, which
show me quite plainly that they neither know him nor me, and that they
haven't eyes to see what he really is, nor minds to understand. But
though I see the folly of it and the wickedness of it, mamma does not.
She is ready to take other people's words; indeed, there is this to be
said for her, that she does not know him yet, and therefore cannot be
expected to be ready to take his own word before all. Dear Jack, my
heart is so full, and I have so much to tell you, and such perfect
confidence in your sympathy, and also in your insight and ca