looking into the street--as if he had forgotten her in the
interest of watching the strangers passing by! Perhaps he was not
thinking of the strangers; perhaps his mind was dwelling fondly
and regretfully on his wife?

Instinctively, she felt that her thoughts were leading her back
again to a state of doubt from which her youthful hopefulness
recoiled. Was there nothing she could find to do which would
offer some other subject to occupy her mind than herself and her
future?

Looking absently round the room, she noticed the packet of her
father's letters placed on the table by her bedside.

The first three letters that she examined, after untying the
packet, were briefly written, and were signed by names unknown to
her. They all related to race-horses, and to cunningly devised
bets which were certain to make the fortunes of the clever
gamblers on the turf who laid them. Absolute indifference on the
part of the winners to the ruin of the losers, who were not in
the secret, was the one feeling in common, which her father's
correspondents presented. In mercy to his memory she threw the
letters into the empty fireplace, and destroyed them by burning.

The next letter which she picked out from the little heap was of
some length, and was written in a clear and steady hand. By
comparison with the blotted scrawls which she had just burned, it
looked like the letter of a gentleman. She turned to the
signature. The strange surname struck her; it was "Bennydeck."