above all other women it is but a poor compensation, I fear, for
all that I have made you suffer. My mother has KINDLY (?) informed
me that she told you how feeble I am, and I proved her words true.
I feel that the best service I can render you is to say, Forget
me wholly; and yet you can never know what such words cost me.
_I_ shall never forget, unless death is forgetting. If I had the
strength to be of any help to you at all, I would break away at
once and take the consequences; but I have been an invalid all my
life, and why I still continue to live I scarcely know. If, however,
there should ever be a time when one so weak as I am can aid you,
give me this one shadowy hope that you will come to me. VINTON
ARNOLD."

This was Mildred's reply:

"It is not in my nature to forget, therefore I cannot. It is not
my wish to forget, therefore I will not. You will find me ever the
same. MILDRED JOCELYN."

Roger would have taken her reply to the hotel that very night, so
great was her power over him, but for his sake, as well as her own,
she wished to teach him once for all that their ways were apart.
She dreaded from what he had said that he would follow her to the
city and renew the unwelcome association of his life with hers.
Therefore she engaged heavy, blundering Jotham to deliver the note,
giving him a dollar from her slender purse as a reward. He lost
the note where it was never found, and stolidly concealed the fact
lest he should lose the dollar. The little characteristic missive
fell to the earth somewhere like a seed that drops into an unkindly
soil and perishes. Roger only knew that stupid Jotham had been