seemed to excite you so much.  Until I heard it from you, I did not know Frank Van Buren was within a thousand miles of Camden.  The note from him which I leave with this letter, and which you will remember was brought to the door by a servant, who said it had been mislaid and forgotten, will prove that I tell you truly.  The other note which you found, and which must have fallen from the box where I kept it, was written years ago, when I was almost a little girl, with no thought that I ever could be the humbled, wretched creature I am now.

“Let me tell you all about it, Richard—­how I happened to be engaged to Frank, and how wounded and sore and sorry I was when you came the second time to Chicopee, and asked me to be your wife.”

Then followed the whole story of Ethelyn’s first love.  Nothing was concealed, nothing kept back.  Even the dreariness of the day when Aunt Van Buren came up from Boston and broke poor Ethie’s heart, was described and dwelt upon with that particularity which shows how the lights, and shadows, and sunshine, and storms which mark certain events in one’s history will impress themselves upon one’s mind, as parts of the great joy or sorrow which can never be forgotten.  Then she spoke of meeting Richard, and the train of circumstances which finally led to their betrothal.

“I wanted to tell you about Frank that night, on the shore of the pond, when you told me of Abigail, and twice I made up my mind to do so, but something rose up to prevent it, and after that it was very hard to do so.”

She did not tell him how she at first shrank away from his caresses with a loathing which made her flesh creep, but she confessed that she did not love him, even when taking the marriage vow.

“But I meant to be true to you, Richard.  I meant to be a good wife, and never let you know how I felt.  You were different from Frank; different from most men whom I had met, and you did annoy me so at times.  You will tell me I was foolish to lay so much stress on little things, and so, perhaps, I was; but little things, rather than big, make up the sum of human happiness, and, besides, I was too young to fully understand how any amount of talent and brain could atone for absence of culture of manner.  Then, too, I was so disappointed in your home and family.  You know how unlike they are to my own, but you can never know how terrible it was to me who had formed so different an estimate of them.  I suppose you will say I did not try to assimilate, and perhaps I did not.  How could I, when to be like them was the thing I dreaded most of all?  I do believe they tried to be kind, especially your brothers, and I shall ever be grateful to them for their attempt to please and interest me during that dreadful winter I spent alone, with you in Washington.  You did wrong, Richard, not to take me with you, when I wanted so much to go.  I know that, after what happened, you and your mother think you were fully justified