nxiety.

Your loving sister,

CHRISTINE.

This letter had a singular fate. It was left at Neil's house five
minutes after Neil had left his house for a journey to London, on some
important business for the Western Bank. It was consequently given to
Mrs. Ruleson. She looked at it curiously. It was a woman's writing,
and the writing was familiar to her. The half-obliterated post office
stamp assured her. It was from Neil's home, and there was the word
"Haste" on the address, so there was probably trouble there. With some
hesitation she opened and read it, read slowly and carefully, every
word of it, and when she had done so, flung it from her in passionate
contempt.

"The lying, thieving, contemptible creature," she said, in a low,
intense voice. "I gave him ninety pounds, when his father died. He
told me then some weird story about this money. And I believed him. I,
Roberta Rath, believed him! I am ashamed of myself! Reginald told me
long syne that he knew the little villain was making a private hoard
for himself, and that the most o' his earnings went to it. I will look
into that business next. Reggie told me I would come to it. I cannot
think of it now, my first care must be this poor, anxious girl, and
her dying mother. I believe I will go to Culraine and see them! He has
always found out a reason for me not going. I will just show him I am
capable of taking my own way."

She reflected on this decision for a few moments, and then began to
carry it out with a smiling hurry. She made arrangements with her cook
for the carrying on of the household for her calculated absence of
three days. Then she dressed herself with becoming fashion and
fitness, and in less than an hour, had visited the Bank of Scotland,
and reached the railway station. Of course she went first to
Edinburgh, and she lingered a little there, in the fur shops. She
selected a pretty neck piece and muff of Russian sable, and missed a
train, and so it was dark, and too late when she reached the town to
go to the village of Culraine.

"It is always my way," she murmured, as she sat over her lonely cup
of tea in her hotel parlor. "I am so long in choosing what I want,
that I lose my luck. I wonder now if I have really got the best and
the bonniest. Poor father, he was aye looking for a woman to be a
mother to me, and never found one good enough. I was well in my
twenties before I could decide on a husband; and I am pretty sure I
waited too long.