hopes seem to
have come to a full stop and I do not know what to say to you.
My summer's work, and all my ambitions, as I feared, have ended
in one grand crash. Out of this I saved your uncle and those on
the island who bought stock. I also saved myself, or, as it
turned out, my aunt's fortune, for unbeknown to me she had been
led to invest in Rockhaven stock and lost all. As she has given
me all that I have known of home since boyhood, I should have
been more than ungrateful had I not taken care of her.

"What my future plans are, I cannot say. The world is wide, and
some place in it for me will be found. Where it is, or what
doing, I know not.

"It is but a few days since I left the island, hoping soon to
return, and now it seems months. I recall all the charming
hours we have passed together with keen interest, and yet they
seem to-night like an old, old memory, returning even as the
scenes of my boyhood return when I am despondent."

More than this he wrote, but it need not be quoted, being merely tender
phrases and without point.

Mona, trying to read between the lines, as well she might, imagined it
to be a farewell message and a good-by to herself.

Reading thus, and a false reading at that, she betook herself to the old
tower, and there, all alone with her heartache, while the stars looked
down in pity and the ocean moaned close by, she cast herself upon the
cold stones and cried her heart agony away.

And the letter was never answered.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A WOMAN'S WILES

The bubble of Rockhaven, the flight of Weston, the suicide of Hill
furnished a few items for the city press, a little gossip among
interested ones for a week, then passed into history, to be forgotten by
most people. Page, lionized for a day by other brokers whose scalps he
had saved, resumed his operations as usual with an increased clientele;
while Simmons, the defeated one in this battle of values, was seldom
seen on the floor of the exchange. Jack Nickerson returned to his wonted
existence, speculating a little, gambling in the club when congenial
spirits gathered, and, as usual, sneering at the weaknesses of all human
kind; while Winn, growing more despondent day by day at the turn in the
tide of affairs, hardly knew what to do with himself. Occasionally he
walked past the door of Weston & Hill's office, now closed by the hand
of law, and glanc