ss Maclachlan's school to her new situation,
when the postman passed and left a letter for her.

"I will put it in my pocket and read it in the train," she said, with a
slight change of color. For she recognized the handwriting of that good
man who had loved her, and whom she could not love.

"Better read it now. No time like the present," observed Miss
Maclachlan.

Miss Williams did so. As soon as she was fairly started and alone in the
fly, she opened it, with hands slightly trembling, for she was touched by
the persistence of the good rector, and his faithfulness to her, a poor
governess, when he might have married, as they said in his neighborhood,
"anybody." He would never marry any body now--he was dying.

"I have come to feel how wrong I was," he wrote, "in ever trying to
change our happy relations together. I have suffered for this--so have
we all. But it is now too late for regret. My time has come. Do not
grieve yourself by imagining it has come the faster through any decision
of yours, but by slow, inevitable disease, which the doctors have only
lately discovered. Nothing could have saved me. Be satisfied that there
is no cause for you to give yourself one moment's pain." (How she sobbed
over those shaky lines, more even than over the newspaper lines which she
had read that sun-shiny morning on the shore!) "Remember only that you
made me very happy--me and all mine--for years; that I loved you, as even
at my age a man can love; as I shall love you to the end, which can not
be very far off now. Would you dislike coming to see me just once again?
My girls will so very glad, and nobody knows any thing. Besides, what
matter? I am dying. Come, if you can within a week or so; they tell me
I may last thus long. And I want to consult with you about my children.
Therefore I will not say good-by now, only good-night, and God bless
you."

But it was good-by, after all. Though she did not wait the week; indeed,
she waited for nothing, considered nothing, except her gratitude to this
good man--the only man who had loved her--and her affection for the two
girls, who would soon be fatherless; though she sent a telegram from
Brighton to say she was coming, and arrived within twenty-four hours,
still--she came too late.

When she reached the village she heard that his sufferings were all over;
and a few yards from his garden wall, in the shade of the church-yard
lime-tree, the old sexton was busy re-op