betters--not for him!
Nevertheless, as he went to bed, and thought of the melting gaze
that had met his, he was deeply stirred; and actually, though the
north was in him, he forgot, for the first time in all that
twelvemonth, for the first time since that terrible night in
Malines, to say his prayers to Martia--and next morning he found a
letter by his bedside in pencil-written blaze of his own
handwriting:

"Barty my Beloved,--A crisis has come in your affairs, which are
mine; and, great as the cost is to me, I must write again, at the
risk of betraying what amounts to a sacred trust; a secret that I
have innocently surprised, the secret of a noble woman's heart.

"One of the richest girls in England, one of the healthiest and most
beautiful women in the whole world, a bride fit for an emperor, is
yours for the asking. It is my passionate wish, and a matter of life
and death to me, that you and Julia Royce should become man and
wife; when you are, you shall both know why.

"Mr. Nobody of Nowhere--as you are so fond of calling yourself--you
shall be such, some day, that the best and highest in the land will
be only too proud to be your humble friends and followers; no woman
is too good for you--only one good enough! and she loves you: of
that I feel sure--and it is impossible you should not love her back
again.

"I have known her from a baby, and her father and mother also; I
have inhabited her, as I have inhabited you, although I have never
been able to give her the slightest intimation of the fact. You are
both, physically, the most perfect human beings I was ever in; and
in heart and mind the most simply made, the most richly gifted, and
the most admirably balanced; and I have inhabited many thousands,
and in all parts of the globe.

"You, Barty, are the only one I have ever been able to hold
communication with, or make to feel my presence; it was a strange
chance, that--a happy accident; it saved your life. I am the only
one, among many thousands of homeless spirits, who has ever been
able to influence an earthly human being, or even make him feel the
magnetic current that flows through us all, and by which we are able
to exist; all the rappings and table-turnings are mere hysterical
imaginations, or worse--the cheapest form of either trickery or
self-deception that can be. Barty, your un