health and in much better spirits than when I left home. Oh,
father, if I should lose her now--if I should get no reward for
sparing her but the bitterest of all disappointments! Sometimes I
am vain enough to think that I made some little impression on
her; sometimes I doubt if she has a suspicion of my love. She
lives in a gay world--she is the center of perpetual
admiration--men with all the qualities to win a woman's heart are
perpetually about her--can I, dare I hope? Yes, I must! Only keep
her, I entreat you, at The Glen Tower. In that quiet world, in
that freedom from frivolities and temptations, she will listen to
me as she might listen nowhere else. Keep her, my dearest,
kindest father--and, above all things, breathe not a word to her
of this letter. I have surely earned the privilege of being the
first to open her eyes to the truth. She must know nothing, now
that I am coming home, till she knows all from my own lips."


Here the writing hurriedly broke off. I am only giving myself
credit for common feeling, I trust, when I confess that what I
read deeply affected me. I think I never felt so fond of my boy,
and so proud of him, as at the moment when I laid down his
letter.

As soon as I could control my spirits, I began to calculate the
question of time with a trembling eagerness, which brought back
to my mind my own young days of love and hope. My son was to come
back, at the latest, on the first of November, and Jessie's
allotted six weeks would expire on the twenty-second of October.
Ten days too soon! But for the caprice which had brought her to
us exactly that number of days before her time she would have