faith in
him still.

She reviewed his language and his conduct toward her, when she had
returned that morning from her walk. He had been kind and considerate;
he had listened to her little story of the relics of her father, found
in the garret, as if her interests were his interests. There had been
nothing to disappoint her, nothing to complain of, until she had rashly
attempted to discover whether he was free to make her his wife. She had
only herself to blame if he was cold and distant when she had alluded
to that delicate subject, on the day when he first knew that the Divorce
had been granted and his child had been taken from him. And yet, he
might have found a kinder way of reproving a sensitive woman than
looking into the street--as if he had forgotten her in the interest of
watching the strangers passing by! Perhaps he was not thinking of the
strangers; perhaps his mind was dwelling fondly and regretfully on his
wife?

Instinctively, she felt that her thoughts were leading her back again to
a state of doubt from which her youthful hopefulness recoiled. Was there
nothing she could find to do which would offer some other subject to
occupy her mind than herself and her future?

Looking absently round the room, she noticed the packet of her father's
letters placed on the table by her bedside.

The first three letters that she examined, after untying the packet,
were briefly written, and were signed by names unknown to her. They all
related to race-horses, and to cunningly devised bets which were certain
to make the fortunes of the clever gamblers on the turf who laid them.
Absolute indifference on the part of the winners to the ruin of the
losers, who were not in the secret, was the one feeling in common, which
her father's correspondents presented. In mercy to his memory she threw
the letters into the empty fireplace, and destroyed them by burning.

The next letter which she picked out from the little heap was of some
length, and was written in a clear and steady hand. By comparison with
the blotted scrawls which she had just burned, it looked like the letter
of a gentleman. She turned to the signature. The strange surname struck
her; it was "Bennydeck."

Not a common name, and not a name which seemed to be altogether unknown
to her. Had she heard her father mention it at home in the time of her
early childhood? There were no associations with it that she could now
call to mind.

She read the letter. It add