Lily. "Do not go to her yet. I think it's
from--Adolphus."

"Oh, Lily, what do you mean?"

"I don't know, dear. We'll wait a little longer. Don't look like
that, Bell." And Lily strove to appear calm, and strove almost
successfully.

"You have frightened me so," said Bell.

"I am frightened myself. He only sent me one line yesterday, and now
he has sent nothing. If some misfortune should have happened to him!
Mrs Crump brought down the letter herself to mamma, and that is so
odd, you know."

"Are you sure it was from him?"

"No; I have not spoken to her. I will go up to her now. Don't you
come, Bell. Oh! Bell, do not look so unhappy." She then went over and
kissed her sister, and after that, with very gentle steps, made her
way up to her mother's room. "Mamma, may I come in?" she said.

"Oh! my child!"

"I know it is from him, mamma. Tell me all at once."

Mrs Dale had read the letter. With quick, glancing eyes, she had made
herself mistress of its whole contents, and was already aware of the
nature and extent of the sorrow which had come upon them. It was a
sorrow that admitted of no hope. The man who had written that letter
could never return again; nor if he should return could he be
welcomed back to them. The blow had fallen, and it was to be borne.
Inside the letter to herself had been a very small note addressed to
Lily. "Give her the enclosed," Crosbie had said in his letter, "if
you do not now think it wrong to do so. I have left it open, that you
may read it." Mrs Dale, however, had not yet read it, and she now
concealed it beneath her handkerchief.

I will not repeat at length Crosbie's letter to Mrs Dale. It covered
four sides of letter-paper, and was such a letter that any man who
wrote it must have felt himself to be a rascal. We saw that he had
difficulty in writing it, but the miracle was, that any man could
have found it possible to write it. "I know you will curse me," said
he; "and I deserve to be cursed. I know that I shall be punished for
this, and I must bear my punishment. My worst punishment will be
this, that I never more shall hold up my head again." And then,
again, he said:--"My only excuse is my conviction that I should
never make her happy. She has been brought up as an angel, with pure
thoughts, with holy hopes, with a belief in all that is good, and
high, and noble. I have been surrounded through my whole life by
things low, and mean, and ignoble. How could I live with her,