worse than it is; and it is bad enough, Heaven knows, for any woman to
have written to her husband--or to any one else's husband. You thought
you were the centre of the world when you wrote that letter. Without a
penny, he would be a great man, with a great future; but you are only a
pretty little woman with a fortune, who has thought a great lot of
herself, and far too much of herself only, when she wrote that letter."

"How do you know what is in it?" There was agony and challenge at once
in the other's voice. "Because I read it--oh, don't look so shocked!
I'd do it again. I knew just how to act when I'd read it. I steamed it
open and closed it up again. Then I wrote to you. I'm not sorry I did
it. My motive was a good one. I wanted to help him. I wanted to
understand everything, so that I'd know best what to do. Though he's so
far above us in birth and position, he seemed in one way like our own.
That's the way it is in new countries like this. We don't think of lots
of things that you finer people in the old countries do, and we don't
think evil till it trips us up. In a new country all are strangers among
the pioneers, and they have to come together. This town is only twenty
years old, and scarcely anybody knew each other at the start. We had to
take each other on trust, and we think the best as long as we can. Mr.
Crozier came to live with us, and soon he was just part of our life--not
a boarder; not some one staying the night who paid you what he owed you
in the morning. He was a friend you could say your prayers with, or eat
your meals with, or ride a hundred miles with, and just take it as a
matter of course; for he was part of what you were part of, all this out
here--don't you understand?"

"I am trying hard to do so," was the reply in a hushed voice. Here was a
world, here were people of whom Mona Crozier had never dreamed. They
were so much of an antique time--far behind the time that her old land