ault or mine? Was her marriage to blame for it or my
spinsterhood? Difficult to tell then, impossible to tell now. I would
not even think of it again, save as a warning. Nothing must stand
between me and her children now that my attention has been called to
them again.

I did not mean to take them by surprise--that is, not entirely. The
invitation which they had sent me years ago was still in force, making
it simply necessary for me to telegraph them that I had decided to make
them a visit, and that they might expect me by the noon train. If in
times gone by they had been properly instructed by their mother in
regard to the character of her old friend, this need not put them out. I
am not a woman of unbounded expectations. I do not look for the comforts
abroad I am accustomed to find at home, and if, as I have reason to
believe, their means are not of the greatest, they would only provoke me
by any show of effort to make me feel at home in the humble cottage
suited to their fortunes.

So the telegram was sent, and my preparations completed for an early
departure.

But, resolved as I was to make this visit, my determination came near
receiving a check. Just as I was leaving the house--at the very moment,
in fact, when the hackman was carrying out my trunk, I perceived a man
approaching me with every evidence of haste. He had a letter in his
hand, which he held out to me as soon as he came within reach.

"For Miss Butterworth," he announced. "Private and immediate."

"Ah," thought I, "a communication from Mr. Gryce," and hesitated for a
moment whether to open it on the spot or to wait and read it at my
leisure on the cars. The latter course promised me less inconvenience
than the first, for my hands were cumbered with the various small
articles I consider indispensable to the comfortable enjoyment of the
shortest journey, and the glasses without which I cannot read a word,
were in the very bottom of my pocket under many other equally necessary
articles.

But something in the man's expectant look warned me that he would never
leave me till I had read the note, so with a sigh I called Lena to my
aid, and after several vain attempts to reach my glasses, succeeded at
last in pulling them out, and by their help reading the following
hurried lines:

"DEAR MADAM:

"I send you this by a swifter messenger than myself. Do not let
anything that I may have said last night influence you to leave
your com