friendless was
also the day, sir, when I had that dream or vision of you which I have
already related. I lingered on at the house in the Canongate, partly
because the landlady was kind to me, partly because I was so depressed
by my position that I really did not know what to do next.

"In this wretched condition you discovered me on that favorite walk
of mine from Holyrood to Saint Anthony's Well. Believe me, your kind
interest in my fortunes has not been thrown away on an ungrateful woman.
I could ask Providence for no greater blessing than to find a brother
and a friend in you. You have yourself destroyed that hope by what you
said and did when we were together in the parlor. I don't blame you: I
am afraid my manner (without my knowing it) might have seemed to give
you some encouragement. I am only sorry--very, very sorry--to have no
honorable choice left but never to see you again.

"After much thin king, I have made up my mind to speak to those other
relatives of my father to whom I have not yet applied. The chance that
they may help me to earn an honest living is the one chance that I have
left. God bless you, Mr. Germaine! I wish you prosperity and happiness
from the bottom of my heart; and remain, your grateful servant,

"M. VAN BRANDT.

"P.S.--I sign my own name (or the name which I once thought was mine) as
a proof that I have honestly written the truth about myself, from first
to last. For the future I must, for safety's sake, live under some other
name. I should like to go back to my name when I was a happy girl at
home. But Van Brandt knows it; and, besides, I have (no matter how
innocently) disgraced it. Good-by again, sir; and thank you again."

So the letter concluded.

I read it in the temper of a thoroughly disappointed and thoroughly
unreasonable man. Whatever poor Mrs. Van Brandt had done, she had done
wrong. It was wrong of her, in the first place, to have married at all.
It was wrong of her to contemplate receiving Mr. Van Brandt again, even
if his lawful wife had died in the interval. It was wrong of her to
return my letter of introduction, after I had given myself the trouble
of altering it to suit her capricious fancy. It was wrong of her to take
an absurdly prudish view of a stolen kiss and a tender declaration,
and to fly from me as if I were as great a scoundrel as Mr. Van Brandt
himself. And last, and more than all, it was wrong of her to sign her
C