n Aunt
Van Buren's letter. Shall I read you what she says?"

Every nerve in Richard's body had been quivering with curiosity to see
that letter, but now, when the coveted privilege was within his reach,
he refused it; and, little dreaming of all he was throwing aside,
answered indifferently: "No, I don't know that I care to hear it. I
hardly think it will pay. Where are they now?"

"At Saratoga," Ethelyn replied; but her voice was not the same which had
addressed Richard first; there was a coldness, a constraint in it now,
as if her good resolution had been thrown back upon her and frozen up
the impulse prompting her to the right.

Richard had had his chance with Ethelyn and lost it. But he did not know
it, or guess how sorry and disappointed she was when at last she left
him and retired to her sleeping-room. There was a window open in the
parlor, and as the wind was rising with a sound of rain, Richard went to
close it ere following his wife. The window was near to the piano and as
he shut it something rattled at his feet. It was the crumpled letter,
which Ethelyn had accidentally drawn from her dress pocket with the
handkerchief she held in her hand when she sat down by Richard. He knew
it was that letter, and his first thought was to carry it to Ethelyn;
then, as he remembered her offer to read it to him, he said, "Surely
there can be no harm in reading it for myself. A man has a right to know
what is in a letter to his wife."

Thus reasoning, he sat down by the side light as far away from the
bedroom door as possible and commenced Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's letter. They
were stopping at the United States, and there was nothing particular at
first, except her usual remarks of the people and what they wore; but on
the third page Richard's eye caught Frank's name, and skipping all else,
leaped eagerly forward to what the writer was saying of her son. His
conduct evidently did not please his mother; neither did the conduct of
Nettie, who was too insipid for anything, the lady wrote, adding that
she was not half so bright and pretty as when she was first married, but
had the headache and kept her own room most of the time, and was looking
so faded and worn that Frank was really ashamed of her.

"You know how he likes brilliant, sparkling girls," she wrote, "and of
course he has no patience with Nettie's fancied ailments. I can't say
that I altogether sympathize with her myself; and, dear Ethie, I must
acknowledge that it