It was nearly dark when they reached the hotel and quite dark before dinner was over.  Then Julia suddenly remembered that an old friend of hers was boarding in the house, and suggested going to her room.

“I’d send my card,” she said blushingly, “only she would not know me by the new name, so if you do not mind my leaving you a moment I’ll go and find her myself.”

Guy did not mind, and Julia went out and left him alone.  Scarcely was she gone when he called to mind a letter which had been forwarded to him from Cuylerville, and which he had found awaiting him on his return from the church.  Not thinking it of much consequence he had thrust it in his pocket and in the excitement forgotten it till now.  He had dressed for dinner and worn his wedding coat, and he took the letter out and looked at it a moment, and wondered whom it was from, as people ofttimes do wait and wonder, when breaking the seal would settle the wonder so soon.  It was postmarked in New York, and felt heavy in his hand, and he opened it at last and found that the outer envelope inclosed another one on which his name and address were written in a handwriting once so familiar to him, and the sight of which made him start and breathe heavily for a moment as if the air had suddenly grown thick and burdensome.

Daisy’s handwriting! which he had never thought to see again; for after his engagement with Julia he had burned every vestige of a correspondence it was sorrow now to remember.  One by one, and with a steady hand, he had dropped Daisy’s letters into the fire and watched them turning into ashes, and thought how like his love for her they were when nothing remained of them but the thin gray tissue his breath could blow away.  The four scraps of the marriage settlement which Daisy had brought him on that night of storm he kept, because they seemed to embody something good and noble in the girl; but the letters she had written him were gone past recall, and he had thought himself cut loose from her forever—­when, lo! there had come to him an awakening to the bitterness of the past in a letter from the once-loved wife, whose delicate handwriting made him grow faint and sick for a moment as he held the letter in his hand and read thereon: 

“Guy Thornton, Esq.,
     Brown Cottage,
         Cuylerville, Mass. 
Politeness of Mr. Wilkes.”

Why had she written, and what had she to say to him, he wondered, and for a moment he felt tempted to tear the letter up and never know what it contained.

Better, perhaps, had he done so—­better for him, and better for the fond new wife whose happiness was so perfect, and whose trust in his love so strong.

But he did not tear it up.  He opened it and read—­another chapter will tell us what he read.

CHAPTER VIII

DAISY’S LETTER

It was dated at Rouen, France, and it ran as follows: