“But do you suppose that I have no curiosity as to what you have said about me?”

“I have said nothing but good.  A little boasting about your conquests is the worst.  I mention your Dumbiedikes most flatteringly.  I don’t make fun of him.  I only want to scare Walter a bit.”

“But, Alice, you don’t know the circumstances.  Do let me see the letter; it may be important”——­

“No, no! you shall never see it!  Indeed, no!” cried the girl, running across the porch and down the garden.  She did not want any fastidious caution to suppress the fine things she had said, or cause the trouble of writing another letter.  So she ran out of hearing of the entreaties of her friend.

Ben came to the door to say that Old Soldier and the cabriolet were ready for my daily drive.  While we were gone, the boy would call and take Alice’s letter to the post.  The writer of it was out of sight and hearing.  Here was a dilemma!

Kate threw her thimble and scissors into her box without her usual care, and I heard her walking to and fro.  She passed the window at every turn, and I could see that her cheek was very pale, her eyes fixed upon the floor, and her finger pressed to her lip.  She was thinking intently, in perfect abstraction.  I could see the desk with the open letter upon it.  At every turn Kate drew nearer to it.

It was a moment of intense temptation to my sister.  I knew it, and I watched her struggles with a beating heart.  It was a weighty matter with her.  A belief in a successful rival might give Mr. ——­ pain,—­might cause him to doubt her truth and affection,—­might induce him to forget her, or cast her off in bitter indignation at her supposed fickleness.  I could see in her face her alarm at these suppositions.  Yes, it was a great temptation to do a very dishonorable action.  A word from me would have ended the trial; for it is only in solitude that we are thus assailed.  But then where would have been her merit?  I should only cheat her out of the sweetest satisfaction in life,—­a victory over a wicked suggestion.  My presence would make the Evil One take to flight, and now she was wrestling with him.  I felt sure she would not be conquered; for I could not have looked on to see her defeat.  But who can estimate the power of a woman’s curiosity, where the interests which are her very life are concerned?

She paused by the desk.  The letter was upside down to her.  Her hand was upon it to turn it, and she said boldly, aloud,—­having forgotten me entirely,—­

“I have a right to know what she says.”

Then there was a hesitating pause, while she trembled on the brink of dishonor,—­then a revulsion, and an indignant “Pshaw!”

It was a contemptuous denial of her own flimsy self-justification.  She snatched away her hand, as she said it, with an angry frown.  The blood rushed back to her face.

“I ought to be ashamed of myself!” she exclaimed, energetically.  In a minute she was bustling about, putting away her things.  In passing the window, now that she was freed from the thraldom of her intense thinking, she saw me lying where I might have been the witness to her inclination to wrong.