le,--I wish to speak to you particularly and privately. I
shall be in our grounds tomorrow morning about ten; let me see you
there before you enter the house. Your sincere friend, Valentine
Charteris."

All the world might have read the note--there was nothing wrong in
it--good intentions and a kindly heart dictated it, but it worked fatal
mischief. When Ronald was leaving her mother's house, Miss Charteris
openly placed the letter in his hands.

"This is the first note I have ever written to you," she said, with a
smile. "You must not refuse the request it contains."

"I will send him home happy tomorrow," she thought, "he is easily
influenced for good. He must make up the misunderstanding with his
pretty little wife--neither of them look happy."

Ronald did not open the letter until he reached home. Then he read it
with a half-consciousness of what Valentine wanted him for.

"She is a noble woman," he thought. "Her words made me brave
before--they will do me good again."

He left the folded paper upon the table in his studio; and jealous
little Dora, going in search of some work she had left, found it there.
She read it word by word, the color dying slowly out of her face as she
did so, and a bitter, deadly jealousy piercing her heart like a
two-edged sword. It confirmed her worst fears, her darkest doubts.
How dared this brilliant, beautiful woman lure Ronald from her? How
dared she rob her of his love?

Ronald looked aghast at his wife's face as she re-entered the sitting
room. He had been playing with the children, and had forgotten for the
time both Valentine and her note. He cried out in alarm as she turned
her white, wild face to him in dumb, silent despair.

"What is the matter, Dora?" he cried. "Are you ill or frightened? You
look like a ghost."

She made no reply, and her husband, thinking she had relapsed into one
of her little fits of temper, sighed heavily and bade her good night.

Poor, foolish, jealous heart--she never lay down to rest!

She had quite resolved she would go and meet the husband who was tired
of her and the woman who lured him away. She would listen to all they
had to say, and then confront them. No thought of the dishonor of such
a proceeding struck her. Poor Dora was not gifted with great
refinement of feeling--she looked upon the step she contemplated rather
as a triumph over an enemy than a degradation to herself. She knew the
place in the grounds where th