closer friends after this
experience. Mr. Stuart realized fully what danger Harriet was in with
her unusual beauty, with no mother and with a father who did not
understand her.

"Harriet has done very wrong," Mr. Hamlin added slowly. It was hard,
indeed, for a man of his nature to forgive. "But I shall not reproach her
when she comes back to me," he said quickly. The fear that Harriet might
never return to him at all struck a sudden chill to his soul.

"The child has done wrong, William, I admit it," returned good-natured
Mr. Stuart. "She has been headstrong and foolish. But we have done worse
things in our day, remember."

"I will remember," Mr. Hamlin answered drearily, as he shut himself up
in his room.

Mr. Hamlin would not come down to breakfast. There was still no news of
Harriet. While dear, comfortable Aunt Sallie and the "Automobile Girls"
were seated around the table, making a pretense of eating, there came a
ring at the front door bell.

Ruth jumped up and ran out into the hall. Then followed several moments
of awful suspense. Ruth came back slowly, not with Harriet, but with a
note in her hand. She opened it with shaking fingers, for she recognized
Harriet's handwriting in the address.

The note read: "Dearest Ruth, I shall never come home again. I have
disgraced my father and myself. I would not listen to you and Bab, and
now I know the worst. Mrs. Wilson and Peter Dillon were villains and I
was only a foolish dupe. I spent the night in a boarding house with an
old friend of my mother's." Ruth stopped reading. Her voice sank so low
it was almost impossible to hear her. She had not noticed that her uncle
was standing just outside the door, listening, with white lips.

"I don't know what else to do," Harriet's note continued, when Ruth had
strength to go on. "So early this morning I telegraphed to Charlie
Meyers. When you receive this note, I shall be married to him. Ask my
father to forgive me, for I shall never see him again. Your heart-broken
cousin, Harriet."

"Absurd child!" Miss Sallie ejaculated, trying to hide her tears. But Mr.
Stuart stepped to Mr. Hamlin's side as he entered the room, looking
conscience-stricken and miserable.

Poor Harriet was paying for her folly with a life-time of wretchedness.
She was to marry a man she did not love; and her friends were powerless
to save her.

Mollie slipped quietly away from the table. No one tried to stop her.
Every one thought Mollie was over