n her voice. "I threw myself into
it so. Do you think I've done the thing right?" she added.

With a direct, honest friendliness Mona looked into Kitty eyes. "You
have said the exact right thing as to meaning, I am sure, and I can
change an occasional word here and there to make it all conventional
English."

Kitty nodded. "Don't lose a minute in copying it. We must get the letter
back in his desk as soon as possible."

As Mona wrote, Kitty sat with the envelope in her hand, alternately
looking at it and into the distance beyond the point of pines. She was
certain that she had found the solution of the troubles of Shiel and
Mona Crozier, for Crozier would now have his fortune, and the return to
his wife was a matter of course. Was she altogether sure? But yes, she
was altogether sure. She remembered, with a sudden, swift plunge of
blood in her veins, that early dawn when she bent over him as he lay
beneath the tree, and as she kissed him in his sleep he had murmured,
"My darling!" That had not been for her, though it had been her kiss
which had stirred his dreaming soul to say the words. If they had only
been meant for her, then--oh, then life would be so much easier in the
future! If--if she could only kiss him again and he would wake and say--

She got to her feet with an involuntary exclamation. For an instant she
had been lost in a world of her own, a world of the impossible.

"I almost thought I heard a step in the other room," she said in
explanation to Mona. Going to the door of Crozier's room, she appeared
to listen for a moment, and then she opened it.

"No, it is all right," she said.

In another few minutes Mona had finished the letter. "Do you wish to
read it again?" she asked Kitty, but not handing it to her.

"No, I leave the words to you. It was the right meaning I wanted in it,"
she replied.

Suddenly Mona came to her and laid a hand on her arm. "You are
wonderful--a wonderful, wise, beloved girl," she said, and there were
tears in her eyes.

Kitty gave the tiny fingers a spasmodic clasp, and said: "Quick, we must
get them in!" She put the banknotes inside the sheets of paper, then
hastily placed both in the envelope and sealed the envelope again.

"It's just a tiny bit damp with the steam yet, but it will be all right
in five minutes. How soiled the envelope is!" Kitty added. "Five years
in and out of the desk, in and out of his pocket--but all so nice and
unsoiled and sweet and bonny insid