ers we shall be! Then
Ned will join us in Wisconsin--and who says we shall not be a happy
family there? And that Flory Cleveland will not prove herself quite
tractable and human, although people have dared and presumed to call
her a 'desperate flirt?'

"So, my dearest, I have given you a true history of my _coquetting_
(?) life, with the exception of those tragedies you are acquainted
with already. Frank Blake died, it is true, but never for a moment
have I reproached myself with _his_ death. He was 'found drowned,' so
the verdict of the coroner's jury ran; but have none others been ever
'found drowned,' than men who were in love? I am not jesting, or
speaking lightly now. Heaven knows the subject is far too fearful to
jest about! Could they who have seemed to delight in calling me little
better than a murderess, but know what bitter, bitter hours I have
passed writhing under their 'scorpion tongues,' they would, I think,
be satisfied. I tell you again, my friend, Frank never treated me more
kindly, or considerately, or _justly_ than he did that day when I told
him I _could not_ love him as he deserved to be loved, though I must
ever bear toward him the utmost respect and the kindliest feelings.
And when Tom Harding made that incident a theme for newspaper gossip,
I wonder Heaven had not blasted the right hand that dared to write
such things!

"You know how afterward I went to Frank's home--to his widowed mother.
She, too, turned in horror from me when I told her who I was, and why
I had come so far from my home in search of her. Go to her _now_, my
friend, and she will tell you that she attaches to me _no_ blame. Even
the agonized, heart-broken mother believed me, when I told her all
that had transpired between her son and me. She _knows_, as _you_
know, and as _I_ know, that I never won the affections of her son
intentionally, for the purpose of adding one more name to my list of
conquests.

"And of that other, whose name I will not write--he who died in the
convict's cell--my friend, _had I_ aught to do with that man's crimes?
The brutish madness with which he heard my refusal of his suit--his
dreadful downward course afterward; oh, can unreturned _love_ be the
instigator of such crimes? Had he not been a reckless youth ever;
disliked of all the village boys, whose friendship, even his wealth
and good family could not buy for him? If I would not wed a villain
such as he, where rests the blame? Oh, surely _not wit