; they are on
the dressing-table."

"Very well; you need not wait, Hester, I shall not need you at present."

The woman went out with noiseless step. Margaret turned over the
letters, glancing at the superscriptions rather languidly. She did not
care much for what the mails brought her at present, excepting Garda's
short, rapturous notes with various foreign headings.

The last envelope of the pile--it is always the last letter that strikes
the blow--was inscribed in a handwriting that made her heart stop
beating. "Mrs. Lansing Harold" was scrawled there, in rather large,
rough letters; and within, at the end of the second page--there were
only two filled--the same name was signed without the "Mrs."

Lanse had come back to America. He was coming back to Florida. He was on
his way at that moment to Fernandina, having selected that place because
he had learned that she had "burned down the house on the point," which,
he thought she would allow him to say, was inconsiderate. He had made up
his mind not to take her by surprise, he would go to Fernandina, and
wait there. He was a cripple indeed, this time. And forever. No hope of
a cure, as there had been before. It wasn't paralysis, it was something
with a long name, which apparently meant that he was to spend the rest
of his days in bed, with the occasional variation of an arm-chair. This
last journey of his abroad had been a huge mistake from beginning to end
(the only one he had ever made--he must say that). But he didn't suppose
she would care to hear the particulars; and he should much prefer that
she should not hear them, it wasn't a subject for _her_. He had come
home this time for good and all, it would never be possible for him to
run away again, she might depend upon that. In such afflictions a man,
of course, counted upon his wife; but he wished to be perfectly
reasonable, and therefore he would live wherever she pleased--with his
nurses, his water-pillows, and his back rest--yes, he had come to that!
At present it wasn't clear to him what he was going to do to amuse
himself. He could use his hands, and he had thought of learning to make
_fish-nets_. But perhaps she could think of something better? And then,
with a forcible allusion to the difficulties of his present progress
southward, and a characteristic summing up of the merits of the hotel
where he, with his two attendants, was resting for a day, the short two
pages ended abruptly with his name.

His wi