The summer was drawing to an end.  During the last days of it Kate wrote to Isabel: 

“I could not have believed, dearest friend, that so long a time would pass without my writing.  Since you went away it has been eternity.  And many things have occurred which no one foresaw or imagined.  I cannot tell you how often I have resisted the impulse to write.  Perhaps I should resist now; but there are some matters which you ought to understand; and I do not believe that any one else has told you or will tell you.  If I, your closest friend, have shrunk, how could any one else be expected to perform the duty?

“A week or two after you left I understood why you went away mysteriously, and why during that last visit to me you were unlike yourself.  I did not know then that your gayety was assumed, and that you were broken-hearted beneath your brave disguises.  But I remember your saying that some day I should know.  The whole truth has come out as to why you broke your engagement with Rowan, and why you left home.  You can form no idea what a sensation the news produced.  For a while nothing else was talked of, and I am glad for your sake that you were not here.

“I say the truth came out; but even now the town is full of different stories, and different people believe different things.  But every friend of yours feels perfectly sure that Rowan was unworthy of you, and that you did right in discarding him.  It is safe to say that he has few friends left among yours.  He seldom comes to town, and I hear that he works on the farm like a common hand as he should.  One day not long after you left I met him on the street.  He was coming straight up to speak to me as usual.  But I had the pleasure of staring him in the eyes and of walking deliberately past him as though he were a stranger—­except that I gave him one explaining look.  I shall never speak to him.

“His mother has the greatest sympathy of every one.  They say that no one has told her the truth:  how could any one tell her such things about her own son?  Of course she must know that you dropped him and that we have all dropped him.  They say that she is greatly saddened and that her health seems to be giving way.

“I do not know whether you have heard the other sensation regarding the Meredith family.  You refused Rowan; and now Dent is going to marry a common girl in the neighborhood.  Of course Dent Meredith was always noted for being a quiet little bookworm, near-sighted, and without any knowledge of girls.  So it doesn’t seem very unnatural for him to have collected the first specimen that he came across as he walked about over the country.  This marriage which is to take place in the autumn is the second shock to his mother.

“You will want to hear of other people.  And this reminds me that a few of your friends have turned against you and insist that these stories about Rowan are false, and even accuse you of starting them.  This brings me to Marguerite.