Roger would have taken her reply to the hotel that very night, so great was her power over him, but for his sake, as well as her own, she wished to teach him once for all that their ways were apart.  She dreaded from what he had said that he would follow her to the city and renew the unwelcome association of his life with hers.  Therefore she engaged heavy, blundering Jotham to deliver the note, giving him a dollar from her slender purse as a reward.  He lost the note where it was never found, and stolidly concealed the fact lest he should lose the dollar.  The little characteristic missive fell to the earth somewhere like a seed that drops into an unkindly soil and perishes.  Roger only knew that stupid Jotham had been preferred as her messenger.  She made no secret of the fact, but gave the note to the laborer when he came in to his nooning the following day.  She knew Roger was watching her from the front porch, and as she turned toward him she saw she had wounded him so deeply that she had some compunctions; but he avoided meeting her, nor did she find a chance to speak to him again.  When, an hour later, she was ready to depart with Mr. Atwood for the distant landing, Roger was not to be found.  Her conscience smote her a little, but she felt that it would be the best for him in the future, and would probably end his nonsense about leaving home and winning fame out in the world.  She had a warm, genuine good-will for Mrs. Atwood and Susan, and even for poor, grumbling Mr. Atwood, at whose meagre, shrivelled life she often wondered; and it would be a source of much pain to her if she became even the blameless cause of Roger’s leaving home in the absurd hope of eventually becoming great and rich, and then appearing to her in her poverty, like a prince in fairy lore.  “Nothing but the most vigorous snubbing will bring him to his senses,” she thought, and she now believed that he would soon subside into his old life, and be none the worse for the summer’s episode.  Therefore, after embracing her mother again and again in her room, she bade Mrs. Atwood and Susan good-by very kindly, and they saw her depart with genuine regret.  For Roger there was nothing more than the quiet remark to Mrs. Atwood, “Please say good-by for me to your son.”

Belle and the children accompanied her to the landing, and were in great glee over the long drive.  Mildred’s spirits rose also.  She had learned most emphatically that she was not dead to her lover, and she thought her words, brief as they were, would cheer and sustain him and suggest hope for the future.  Although she was a little sorry for Roger, she was glad to think that his dark, searching eyes would no longer follow her, nor she be compelled from day to day to recognize a curbed but ever-present and unwelcome regard.  His feeling toward her seemed like something pent up, yet growing, and she was always fearing it might burst forth.  In his mastery of the horse he had shown himself so strong and fearless that, not sure of his self-restraint, she dreaded lest in some unguarded moment he might vehemently plead for her love.  The very thought of this made her shudder and shrink, and the belief that she would probably never see him again gave decided relief.