to replace the letter.

"It's not your letter--no, you shall not," said Kitty firmly as she
jerked aside the hand laid upon her wrist, and threw one arm on the lid,
holding it down as Mrs. Crozier tried to keep it open. Then with a
swift action of the free hand she locked the desk and put the key in her
pocket.

"If you destroyed this letter he would never believe but that it was
worse than it is; and it is bad enough, Heaven knows, for any woman to
have written to her husband--or to any one else's husband. You thought
you were the centre of the world when you wrote that letter. Without a
penny, he would be a great man, with a great future; but you are only
a pretty little woman with a fortune, who has thought a great lot of
herself, and far too much of herself only, when she wrote that letter."

"How do you know what is in it?" There was agony and challenge at once
in the other's voice. "Because I read it--oh, don't look so shocked! I'd
do it again. I knew just how to act when I'd read it. I steamed it open
and closed it up again. Then I wrote to you. I'm not sorry I did it.
My motive was a good one. I wanted to help him. I wanted to understand
everything, so that I'd know best what to do. Though he's so far above
us in birth and position, he seemed in one way like our own. That's the
way it is in new countries like this. We don't think of lots of things
that you finer people in the old countries do, and we don't think
evil till it trips us up. In a new country all are strangers among the
pioneers, and they have to come together. This town is only twenty years
old, and scarcely anybody knew each other at the start. We had to
take each other on trust, and we think the best as long as we can. Mr.
Crozier came to live with us, and soon he was just part of our life--not
a boarder; not some one staying the night who paid you what he owed you
in the morning. He was a friend you could say your prayers with, or eat
your meals with, or ride a hundred miles with, and just take it as a
matter of course; for he was part of what you were part of, all this out
here--don't you understand?"

"I am trying hard to do so," was the reply in a hushed voice. Here was
a world, here were people of whom Mona Crozier had never dreamed. They
were so much of an antique time--far behind the time that her old land
represented; not a new world, but the oldest world of all. She began to
understand the girl also, and her face took on a comprehendi