Nobody will know how I have gone, or which way I have taken.  On Monday, you may show this letter to my friends, not before.  I do not think they will be in danger of breaking their hearts for me at our house.  Aunt Silence cares for nothing but her own soul, and the other woman hates me, I always thought.  Kitty Fagan will cry hard.  Tell her perhaps I shall come back by and by.  There is a little box in my room, with some keepsakes marked,—­one is for poor Kitty.  You can give them to the right ones.  Yours is with them.

Good-by, dearest.  Keep my secret, as I told you, till Monday.  And if you never see me again, remember how much I loved you.  Never think hardly of me, for you have grown up in a happy home, and do not know how much misery can be crowded into fifteen years of a young girl’s life.  God be with you!

Myrtle hazard.

Olive could not restrain her tears, as she handed the letter to Cyprian.  “Her secret is as safe with you as with me,” she said.  “But this is madness, Cyprian, and we must keep her from doing herself a wrong.

“What she means to do, is to get to Boston, in some way or other, and sail for India.  It is strange that they have not tracked her.  There is no time to be lost.  She shall not go out into the world in this way, child that she is.  No; she shall come back, and make her home with us, if she cannot be happy with these people.  Ours is a happy and a cheerful home, and she shall be to me as a younger sister, and your sister too, Cyprian.  But you must see her; you must leave this very hour; and you may find her.  Go to your cousin Edward, in Boston, at once; tell him your errand, and get him to help you find our poor dear sister.  Then give her the note I will write, and say I know your heart, Cyprian, and I can trust that to tell you what to say.”

In a very short time Cyprian Eveleth was on his way to Boston.  But another, keener even in pursuit than he, was there before him.

Ever since the day when Master Gridley had made that over-curious observation of the young lawyer’s proceedings at the office, Murray Bradshaw had shown a far livelier interest than before in the conditions and feelings of Myrtle Hazard.  He had called frequently at The Poplars to talk over business matters, which seemed of late to require a deal of talking.  He had been very deferential to Miss Silence, and had wound himself into the confidence of Miss Badlam.  He found it harder to establish any very near relations with Myrtle, who had never seemed to care much for any young man but Cyprian Eveleth, and to care for him quite as much as Olive’s brother as for any personal reason.  But he carefully studied Myrtle’s tastes and ways of thinking and of life, so that, by and by, when she should look upon herself as a young woman, and not as a girl, he would have a great advantage in making her more intimate acquaintance.