“Millie,” cried Belle, “you ought to thank your stars, for you have the finest fellow in the city,” and they all smiled at her so brightly that she fled to her room.  There Belle found her a little later with red eyes, and she remarked bluntly, “Well, you are a queer girl.  I suppose you are crying for joy, but that isn’t my way.”

After her sister was asleep Mildred read and re-read Arnold’s letter.  At first she sighed and cried over it, and then lapsed into a long, deep reverie.  “Hard as it is for Roger,” she thought, “he is right—­I am not to blame.  I learned to love Vinton Arnold, and permitted him to love me, before I had ever seen Roger.  I should have a heart of stone could I resist his appeal in this letter.  Here he says:  ’You did not answer my note last summer—­I fear you have cast me off.  I cannot blame you.  After insults from my mother and my own pitiful exhibitions of weakness, my reason tells me that you have banished all thoughts of me in anger and disgust.  But, Millie, my heart will not listen to reason, and cries out for you night and day.  My life has become an intolerable burden to me, and never in all the past has there been a more unhappy exile than I. The days pass like years, and the nights are worse.  I am dragged here and there for the benefit of my health—­what a miserable farce it is!  For half the money I am spending here I could live happily with you, and, sustained by your love and sympathy, I might do something befitting my man’s estate.  One day, when I said as much to my mother, her face grew cold and stern, and she replied that my views of life were as absurd as those of a child!  I often wish I were dead, and were it not for the thought of you I half fear that I might be tempted to end my wretched existence.  Of course my health suffers from this constant unhappiness, repression, and humiliation.  The rumor has reached me that your father has become very poor, and that he is in ill health.  The little blood I have left crimsons my face with shame that I am not at your side to help and cheer you.  But I fear I should be a burden to you, as I am to every one else.  My fainting turns—­one of which you saw-are becoming more frequent.  I’ve no hope nor courage to try to get well—­I am just sinking under the burden of my unhappy, unmanly lite, and my best hope may soon be to become unconscious and remain so forever.  And yet I fully believe that one kind word from you would inspire me with the wish, the power to live.  My mother is blind to everything except her worldly maxims of life.  She means to do her duty by me, and is conscientious in her way, but she is killing me by slow torture.  If you would give me a little hope, if you would wait—­oh, pardon the selfishness of my request, the pitiable weakness displayed in this appeal!  Yet, how can I help it?  Who can sink into absolute despair without some faint struggle—­some effort to escape?  I have had the happiness of heaven in your presence, and now I am as miserable as a lost soul.  You have only to say that there is no hope, and I will soon cease to trouble you or any one much longer.’