east light on this letter.

"But that there's crime at the core of it, or some deep disgrace," he
soliloquized, "appears to me most evident, and I take his assurance in
its fullest meaning that he had nothing to do with it."

The next morning, having slept over the contents of the letter, he went
to his upper room, locked himself in, and read it again. Then after
pausing a while to reconsider it, he went up to the wall to look at a
likeness of Dorothea Graham. Valentine had a photographing machine, and
had filled the house with portraits of himself and his beloved. This was
supposed to be one of the best. "Lucky enough that I had the sense to
leave this behind me," thought Brandon. "Yes, you sweet thing, I am by
no means breaking my heart now about you and your love for that boy. You
are sure to marry him; you have a faithful heart, so the best thing for
him will be to let you marry as soon as possible. I'll tell him so as we
walk to John Mortimer's to-day. I'll tell him he may do it as soon as
he likes."

Accordingly as about six o'clock he and Valentine walked through a wood,
across a common, and then over some fields, Brandon began to make some
remarks concerning the frequent letters that passed between these
youthful lovers. "It is not to be supposed," he observed, "that any lady
would correspond with you thus for years if she had not fully made up
her mind to accept you in the end."

"No," answered Valentine with perfect confidence; "but she knows that I
promised my father to wait a few months more before I decidedly engaged
myself, but for that promise I was to have had an answer from her half a
year ago."

Brandon fully believed that Dorothea Graham loved his brother, and that
her happiness was in his own hands. He had found it easy to put the
possibility of an early marriage in Valentine's way, but nothing could
well go forward without his sanction, and since his return he had
hitherto felt that the words which would give it were too difficult for
him to say. Now, however, that remarkable letter, cutting in across the
usual current of his thoughts, had thrown them back for awhile. So that
Dorothea seemed less real, less dear, less present to him.

The difficult words were about to be said.

"If she knows why you do not speak, and waits, there certainly is an
understanding between you, which amounts almost to the same thing."

"Yes," said Valentine, "and in August, _as she knows_, I shall ask her
again."