what his
sober reason cannot approve. If you could have the letter you then sent
before you now, I imagine that you would no longer wonder that Marston
was offended."

"That is impossible; without doubt, he burned my note the moment he
received it."

Mr. Wellford tried in vain to induce Arnest to consent to forget what
was past; but he affirmed that this was impossible, and that he had no
wish to renew an acquaintance with his old friend.

About the same time that this interview took place, Marston was alone,
thinking with sad and softened feelings of the past. The letter of
Arnest was before him; he had turned it over by accident.

"He could not have been himself when he wrote this," he thought. It was
the first time he had permitted himself to think so. "My words must
have stung him severely, lightly as I uttered them, and with no
intention to wound. This matter ought not to have gone on so long.
Friends are not so plentiful that we may carelessly cast those we have
tried and proved aside. He has many excellent qualities."

Pride came quickly, with many suggestions about self-respect, and what
every man owed to himself.

"He owes it to himself to be just to others," Marston truly thought.
"Was I just in failing to apologize to my friend, notwithstanding this
offensive letter? No, I was not; for his action did not exonerate me
from the responsibility of mine. Ah, me! How passion blinds us!"

After musing for some time, Marston drew towards him a sheet of paper,
and, taking up a pen, wrote:

"MY DEAR SIR:--What I ought to have done years ago, I do now, and that
is, offer you a sincere apology for light words thoughtlessly spoken,
but which I ought not to have used, as they were calculated to wound,
and, I am grieved to think, did wound. But for your note, which I
enclose, I should have made this apology the moment I had an
opportunity. But its peculiar tenor, I then felt, precluded me from
doing so. I confess that I erred in letting my feelings blind my cooler
judgment.

"Your old friend, MARSTON.

"To Mr. Herbert Arnest."

Enclosing the note alluded to in this letter, Marston sealed, and,
ringing for an attendant, despatched it.

"Better to do right late than never," he murmured, as he leaned
pensively back in his chair.

"Let what will come of it, I shall feel better, for I will gain my own
self-respect, and have an inward assurance that I have done
right,--more than I have for a long time had, in re