“I believe I’d give the remainder of my life if I could be put back right here as I was when your uncle Arthur’s letter came and turned my head.  Oh, if the years and everything could be blotted out!”

’What do you suppose he meant?  I was frightened, and did not say a word until he asked me those questions I told you about; did I like pretty things? did I like to live at Tracy Park, and could I bear to be poor and live in the Langley house?  I just told him, ’No, I should not like to live in Langley, that I did like living at Tracy Park, and did like the pretty things which money bought.’

    ’"Then I ought to be content, if my beautiful Maude is so,” he said,
    and the tired look on his face lifted a little.

’He calls me beautiful so often.  But I don’t see it, do you?  Of course you don’t.  You think me too black, and small, and thin, and so I am.  Harold never told me I was pretty, and—­I tell this in confidence, and you must never breathe it to any one—­I have tried to wring a compliment from him so many times, but it’s no use, I can’t do it, he never understands anything, though he does sometimes say, when he brings me a bright rose:  “Wear it, Maude; it will become your style.”

’He never says you are pretty, either, and that is strange, for I think you have the loveliest and sweetest face I ever saw, except Gretchen’s in the picture, you look like her; I saw it so plainly two years ago, when you were here one evening, and I spoke of it to father.  Who was she, I wonder?  Uncle Arthur does not talk much of her now, though I believe he kisses her every night and morning.  How much he thinks of you, and how much he has talked of Cherry since his visit to you in May.  I am so glad you liked the dress, he was so anxious about it.  Did he say any thing to you of a trip to California?  He took us quite by surprise two weeks ago by telling us he was going.  He wanted to see the Yosemite Valley before he died, he said, and June was the time to see it.  So he started off with Charles about ten days ago, and the house seems like a tomb without him.

’If I can, I shall come and see you graduate with the other Vassars, though I shall be ashamed to be seen where I failed so utterly.  I might have known I should, for I haven’t about me a single quality which would entitle me to be a Vassar, unless it is my fondness for gum.  Do you really chew an awful lot there, or is it a fib?  How learned you and Nina will be, and how you will cast me in the shade, making me seem stupider than ever.  I did try very hard to learn to speak German when I was abroad with mamma, for father wished it particularly; but I could not do it, and gave it up.  I have not a capacity for anything, except to love and suffer and sacrifice for those I love.  Do you know, it sometimes frightens me to think how devotedly I could love some one.  Not a girl, but a man—­a lover—­a