day clothes. A feeling of compassion for him began
to steal into her heart.

"If I am not careful," she thought in consternation, "I shall be
saying, 'Yes,' out of pity."

But a doubt quickly crept into her heart. Was it really that he loved
her so very much, or was it that his obstinacy was stronger than his
prudence, and that if he could not get her as he wanted her,--as his
housekeeper and the mother of numberless children,--he would take her
on her own conditions? Only so he got her--that was the point. He had
made up his mind to have her--it must be accomplished.

"Absalom," she said, "I am not going to let you waste any more of your
time. You must never come to see me again after to-night. I won't ever
marry you, and I won't let you go on like this, with your false hope.
If you come again, I won't see you. I'll go up-stairs!"

One would have thought that this had no uncertain ring. But again
Tillie knew, when Absalom left her, that his resolution not only was
not shaken,--it was not even jarred.

The weeks moved on, and the longed-for letter did not come. Tillie
tried to gather courage to question the doctor as to whether Fairchilds
had made any arrangement with him for the delivery of a letter to her.
But an instinct of maidenly reserve and pride which, she could not
conquer kept her lips closed on the subject.

Had it not been for this all-consuming desire for a letter, she would
more keenly have felt her enforced alienation from her aunt, of whom
she was so fond; and at the same time have taken really great pleasure
in her new work and in having reached at last her long-anticipated goal.

In the meantime, while her secret sorrow--like Sir Hudibras's rusting
sword that had nothing else to feed upon and so hacked upon
itself--seemed eating out her very heart, the letter which would have
been to her as manna in the wilderness had fallen into her father's
hands, and after being laboriously conned by him, to his utter
confusion as to its meaning, had been consigned to the kitchen fire.

Mr. Getz's reasons for withholding the letter from his daughter and
burning it were several. In the first place, Fairchilds was "an
UNbeliever," and therefore his influence was baneful; he was Jacob
Getz's enemy, and therefore no fit person to be writing friendly
letters to his daughter; he asked Tillie, in his letter, to write to
him, and this would involve the buying of stationery and wasting of
time that might be better s