d like to know.

The day of the funeral The Don brought me a little bunch of lilies of
the valley, saying, "It is for her" I gave them to Helen, and I saw
them afterwards in the hands that lay folded across her breast.

I have not seen him since, but Hooper tells me he said he was going out
to you. I hope to Heaven he will not go bad. I don't think he will. Of
course, he feels very bitterly about Lloyd and Mrs. Fairbanks.

Now, that is all my story. It makes a great difference to all our set
here, but I will tell you what I have told no living soul, and that is,
that the world will never be the same to me again. I am not much given
to sentiment, as you know, and nobody ever suspected it. I do not think
she did herself. But I loved that little girl better than my life, and
I would have given my soul for her any day.

I know you will feel this terribly. How often I have wished that you
could have been with us. The best I could do was to send you this
wretched, incoherent scrawl. Your friend as ever, BROWN.

P.S.--Do you know anything about the British-American Gold and Silver
Mining Company, or something like that? There is a chap here, manager
or director, or something. Ambherg, I think his name is. He speaks as
if he knew you, or knew something about you. He is a great friend of
the Fairbanks. Lots of money, and that sort of thing. I did not like
the way he spoke about you. I felt like giving him a smack. Do you know
him, or anything about the company?

Your mother has not been very well since Betty's death. I think she
found the strain pretty heavy. She has caught a little cold, I am
afraid. B.

Brown's letter did for Shock what nothing else could have done: it
turned his mind away from himself and his sorrow. Not that he was in
any danger of morbid brooding over his loss, or of falling into that
last and most deplorable of all human weaknesses, self-pity, but grief
turns the heart in upon itself, and tends to mar the fine bloom of an
unselfish spirit.

As he finished reading Brown's letter Shock's heart was filled with
love and pity for his friend. "Poor fellow!" he said. "I wonder where
he is now. His is a hard lot indeed." And as he read the letter over
and over his pity for his friend deepened, for he realised that in his
cup of sorrow there had mingled the gall of remorse and the bitterness
of hate.

In another week two other letters came, each profoundly affecting Shock
and his life. One was from Helen