“Come in!” I said.

“The letter!” answered a husky voice.  She stretched out a bony hand, without moving a step.

“It is for a lady—­very important business,” said I, taking up the letter; “are you sure that there is no mistake?”

She drew her hand under the shawl, turned without a word, and moved toward the hall door.

“Stop!” I cried; “I beg a thousand pardons!  Take it—­take it!  You are the right messenger!”

She clutched it, and was instantly gone.

Several days passed, and I gradually became so nervous and uneasy that I was on the point of inserting another “Personal” in the daily papers, when the answer arrived.  It was brief and mysterious; you shall hear the whole of it.

“I thank you.  Your letter is a sacred confidence which I pray you never to regret.  Your nature is sound and good.  You ask no more than is reasonable, and I have no real right to refuse.  In the one respect which I have hinted, I may have been unskilful or too narrowly cautious:  I must have the certainty of this.  Therefore, as a generous favor, give me six months more!  At the end of that time I will write to you again.  Have patience with these brief lines:  another word might be a word too much.”

You notice the change in her tone?  The letter gave me the strongest impression of a new, warm, almost anxious interest on her part.  My fancies, as first at Wampsocket, began to play all sorts of singular pranks:  sometimes she was rich and of an old family, sometimes moderately poor and obscure, but always the same calm, reposeful face and clear gray eyes.  I ceased looking for her in society, quite sure that I should not find her, and nursed a wild expectation of suddenly meeting her, face to face, in the most unlikely places and under startling circumstances.  However, the end of it all was patience—­patience for six months.

There’s not much more to tell; but this last letter is hard for me to read.  It came punctually, to a day.  I knew it would, and at the last I began to dread the time, as if a heavy note were falling due, and I had no funds to meet it.  My head was in a whirl when I broke the seal.  The fact in it stared at me blankly, at once, but it was a long time before the words and sentences became intelligible.

“The stipulated time has come, and our hidden romance is at an end.  Had I taken this resolution a year ago, it would have saved me many vain hopes, and you, perhaps, a little uncertainty.  Forgive me, first, if you can, and then hear the explanation!

“You wished for a personal interview:  you have had, not one, but many.  We have met, in society, talked face to face, discussed the weather, the opera, toilettes, Queechy, Aurora Floyd, Long Branch and Newport, and exchanged a weary amount of fashionable gossip; and you never guessed that I was governed by any deeper interest!