And now, what so chilly as the fire that has gone out!  Gone out long ago, dear Grizel, while you crouched over it.  You may put your hand in the ashes; they will not burn you now.  Ah, Grizel, why do you sit there in the cold?

The day of the letter!  It began in dread, but ended so joyfully, do you think Grizel grudged the dread?  It became dear to her; she loved to return to it and gaze at the joy it glorified, as one sees the sunshine from a murky room.  When she heard the postman’s knock she was not even curious; so few letters came to her, she thought this must be Maggy Ann’s monthly one from Aberdeen, and went on placidly dusting.  At last she lifted it from the floor, for it had been slipped beneath the door, and then Grizel was standing in her little lobby, panting as if at the end of a race.  The letter lay in both her hands, and they rose slowly until they were pressed against her breast.

She uttered some faint cries (it was the only moment in which I have known Grizel to be hysterical), and then she ran to her room and locked herself in—­herself and it.  Do you know why that look of elation had come suddenly to her face?  It was because he had not even written the address in a disguised hand to deceive the postmistress.  So much of the old Grizel was gone that the pathos of her elation over this was lost to her.

Several times she almost opened it.  Why did she pause? why had that frightened look come into her eyes?  She put the letter on her table and drew away from it.  If she took a step nearer, her hands went behind her back as if saying, “Grizel, don’t ask us to open it; we are afraid.”

Perhaps it really did say the dear things that love writes.  Perhaps it was aghast at the way she was treating it.  Dear letter!  Her mouth smiled to it, but her hands remained afraid.  As she stood irresolute, smiling, and afraid, she was a little like her mother.  I have put off as long as possible saying that Grizel was ever like her mother.  The Painted Lady had never got any letters while she was in Thrums, but she looked wistfully at those of other people.  “They are so pretty,” she had said; “but don’t open them:  when you open them they break your heart.”  Grizel remembered what her mother had said.

Had the old Grizel feared what might be inside, it would have made her open the letter more quickly.  Two minds to one person were unendurable to her.  But she seemed to be a coward now.  It was pitiable.

Perhaps it was quite a common little letter, beginning “Dear Grizel,” and saying nothing more delicious or more terrible than that he wanted her to lend him one of the doctor’s books.  She thought of a score of trivialities it might be about; but the letter was still unopened when David Gemmell called to talk over some cases in which he required her counsel.  He found her sitting listlessly, something in her lap which she at once concealed.  She failed to follow his arguments, and he went away puckering his brows, some of the old doctor’s sayings about her ringing loud in his ears.