shall think myself lucky if I may touch the hem of your garment.
Will you encourage me thus far? Like Hamlet, 'I lack advancement'!
When will you take me to Briar Farm? I should like to see the tomb
of my very ancestral uncle--could we not arrange a day's outing in
the country while the weather is fine? I throw myself on your
consideration and clemency for this--and for many other unwritten
things!

Yours,

AMADIS DE JOCELYN."

There was nothing in this easily worded scrawl to make an
ordinarily normal heart beat faster, yet the heart of this simple
child of the gods, gifted with genius and deprived of worldly
wisdom as all such divine children are, throbbed uneasily, and her
eyes were wet. More than this, she touched the signature,--the
long-familiar name--with her soft lips,--and as though afraid of
what she had done, hurriedly folded the letter and locked it away.

Then she sat down and thought. Nearly two years had elapsed since
she had left Briar Farm, and in that short time she had made the
name she had adopted famous. She could not call it her own name;
born out of wedlock, she had no right, by the stupid law, to the
name of her father. She could, legally, have worn the maiden name
of her mother had she known it--but she did not know it. And what
she was thinking of now, was this: Should she tell her lately
discovered second "Amadis de Jocelyn" the true story of her birth
and parentage at this, the outset of their friendship, before--
well, before it went any further? She could not consult Miss Leigh