t. We
were in France three months, and then, coming home, papa died. It was
on the voyage. I wish he had asked me to forgive him, for then I think
I could have remembered him with more tenderness. But he did nothing of
the kind. He did not seem to think he had done wrong in any way, though
I feel that some way we might have saved you. I am back here in Chicago
in the old home. But I shall not stay in this house. It is so large
and lonesome, and I always see you and father facing each other angrily
there in the parlor when I enter it. So I am going to get me some cosey
rooms in another part of the city, and take my aunt, who is a sweet old
lady, to live with me; and I am going to devote my time--all of it--and
all of my brains to getting you out of that terrible place. What is the
use of telling me that you are a murderer? Do I not know you could not
be brought to hurt anything? I suppose you must have killed that poor
man, but then it was not you, it was that dreadful drink--it was Me!
That is what continually haunts me. If I had been a braver girl, and
spoken the words that were in my heart, you would not have gone into
that place. You would be innocent to-day. It was I who was responsible
for it all. I let father kill your heart right there before me, and
never said a word. Yet I knew how it was with you, and--this is what
I ought to have said then, and what I must say now--and all the time I
felt just as you did. I thought I should die when I saw you go away, and
knew you would never come back again. Only I was so selfish, I was so
wicked, I would say nothing.

"I have no right to be comfortable and hopeful, and to have friends,
with you shut up from liberty and happiness. I will not have those
comfortable rooms, after all. I will live as you do. I will live alone
in a bare room. For it is I who am guilty! And then I will feel that I
also am being punished.

"Do you hate me? Perhaps my telling you now all these things, and that I
felt toward you just as you did toward me, will not make you happy. For
it may be that you despise me.

"Anyway, I have told you the truth now. I will go as soon as I hear from
you to a lawyer, and try to find out how you may be liberated. I am sure
it can be done when the facts are known.

"Poor boy! How I do hope you have known in your heart that I was not
forgetting you. Indeed, day or night, I have thought of nothing else.
Now I am free to help you. And be sure, whatever happens, tha