n addressing you so unguardedly as I did yesterday, when we stood
alone by my mother's casket. Pray forgive me, for, while I am
bound to confess that the words were forced from me by a true,
strong love, which will always live in my heart--a love such as a
man experiences but once in his life for a woman whom he would win
for his wife, if he could do so honorably--I know that, situated
as I am, with a life of labor before me and only my own efforts to
help me build up a possible fortune, I should not have betrayed
myself as I did. I was unnerved by my great sorrow, and your
gentle sympathy, coming as it did like balm to my wounded heart,
unsealed my lips before I was aware of it. Again I beg your
forgiveness, and with it forgetfulness of aught that could serve
to lower me in your esteem.

"Sincerely yours,

"Wallace Richardson."

Violet was greatly excited by the contents of this letter, and burst
into a flood of tears the moment she had perused it.

She understood just how matters stood.

She comprehended how Wallace had grown to love her, even as she had,
though at the time unconsciously, learned to love him while she was an
invalid in his home; how, with his proud, manly sense of honor, he had
determined never to reveal his secret, from a fear that he would be
regarded as a fortune-hunter, and that her aristocratic relatives would
scorn an alliance with him on account of his poverty.

But Violet felt that he was her peer, if not her superior, in every
respect save that of wealth; that a grand future lay before him--grand
because he would climb to the top-most round in the ladder of his
profession, if energy, perseverance, and unswerving rectitude could
attain it.

He might be poor in purse now, but what of that? Money was of little
value compared with a nature so rich and noble as his; and, more than
that--she loved him!

"Yes, I do!" she exclaimed, as she pressed to her lips the precious
letter that told of his love for her. "I am not ashamed of it either,
and--I am going to tell him of it."

A crimson flush mounted to her brow as she gave expression to this
resolution, and, for a moment, a sense of maidenly reserve and timidity
oppressed her. The next she tossed back her pretty head with a resolute
air.

"Why should I not tell him?" she said. "Why should I conceal the fact
when the knowledge will make two true, loving hearts happy? I have money
e