nothing had occurred to make him change
his wishes or his hopes; since her absence began his resolve had grown.
He felt more than ever that the claim of Mr. Plummer upon her, though of
a high and noble nature, even if he did hold her promise, must yield to
the love of the husband for the wife. Mr. Plummer would come to see
this, and he would come to see it in time. He had no desire to interfere
with the natural affection of the man who had done so much for Sylvia,
nor did he feel that he was making such interference.

Harley was not sure that he would receive a reply to this letter, but it
came in due time, nevertheless, and it was Jimmy Grayson himself who
handed it to him. The handwriting of the address was known, of course,
to Mr. Grayson, and he could scarcely have failed to notice it, but he
said nothing, and apparently the fact passed unheeded by him.

Sylvia, in the course of her letter, confined herself to impartial
narrative, and began with the event of the spellbinder, which Harley had
told to her in detail. Indeed, it seemed to Harley that she devoted a
very remarkable amount of space to its consideration, especially as she
agreed with him that Mr. Grayson's action was right; nevertheless, she
discussed it from all points of the compass, and then she wrote with
almost equal amplitude of her sight-seeing in Salt Lake City.

Harley knew that Mormons were no novelty to Sylvia, as she had seen many
of them in Idaho, but she seemed to feel it necessary to describe with
particularity all the great Mormon buildings, and also to speak fully of
the manners and customs of the people. All this might have been very
interesting to him at another time and from another pen, but now he saw
only the handwriting and wished her to devote attention to that little
codicil in his own letter in which he so earnestly avowed again his love
and his belief in its ultimate triumph. She made no allusion whatever to
it, and he felt his heart sink. Nor did she speak of "King" Plummer, and
he could not gather from the letter whether he was yet in Salt Lake City
or had gone back to Idaho. She had carefully avoided all the subjects on
which he hoped she would write, and as he closed the letter and put it
in his pocket he was still rather blue.

But reflection put him in a different and much more pleasant frame of
mind. The fact that she had replied was a good omen, and her very
avoidance of the most delicate of all subjects was proof that s