p with a grave practical face, examined the
postmark curiously, and opened it with severe deliberation. It contained
a manuscript and a letter of four closely written pages. She glanced at
the manuscript with bright approving eyes, ran her fingers through its
leaves and then laid it carefully and somewhat ostentatiously on the
table beside her. Then, still holding the letter in her hand, she rose
and glanced out of the window at her bored brother lounging towards the
beach and at the heaving billows beyond, and returned to her seat. This
apparently important preliminary concluded, she began to read.

There were, as already stated, four blessed pages of it! All vital,
earnest, palpitating with youthful energy, preposterous in premises,
precipitate in conclusions,--yet irresistible and convincing to every
woman in their illogical sincerity. There was not a word of love in it,
yet every page breathed a wholesome adoration; there was not an epithet
or expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected
to, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not a
line of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it was
poetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude, it seemed to be
written less OF himself than TO her; in its delicate because unconscious
flattery, it made her at once the provocation and excuse. And yet so
potent was its individuality that it required no signature. No one but
John Milton Harcourt could have written it. His personality stood out of
it so strongly that once or twice Mrs. Ashwood almost unconsciously
put up her little hand before her face with a half mischievous,
half-deprecating smile, as if the big honest eyes of its writer were
upon her.

It began by an elaborate apology for declining the appointment offered
him by one of her friends, which he was bold enough to think had been
prompted by her kind heart. That was like her, but yet what she might
do to any one; and he preferred to think of her as the sweet and gentle
lady who had recognized his merit without knowing him, rather than the
powerful and gracious benefactress who wanted to reward him when she did
know him. The crown that she had all unconsciously placed upon his head
that afternoon at the little hotel at Crystal Spring was more to him
than the Senator's appointment; perhaps he was selfish, but he could not
bear that she who had given so much should believe that he could accept
a lesser gift.