the lawyer says?" she suggested--and opened the envelope. The
lawyer had nothing to say. He simply inclosed a letter received
at his office.

Mrs. Presty had long passed the age at which emotion expresses
itself outwardly by a change of color. She turned pale,
nevertheless, when she looked at the second letter.

The address was in Herbert Linley's handwriting.


Chapter XXIV.


Hostility.


When she was not eating her meals or asleep in her bed, absolute
silence on Mrs. Presty's part was a circumstance without
precedent in the experience of her daughter. Mrs. Presty was
absolutely silent now. Mrs. Linley looked up.

She at once perceived the change in her mother's face and asked
what it meant. "Mamma, you look as if something had frightened
you. Is it anything in that letter?" She bent over the table, and
looked a little closer at the letter. Mrs. Presty had turned it
so that the address was underneath; and the closed envelope was
visible still intact. "Why don't you open it?" Mrs. Linley asked.

Mrs. Presty made a strange reply. "I am thinking of throwing it