fair daughter had been the cynosure of the provincial High Street; when
young officers had lounged to and fro the pavement, looking in at her
window; when ogles and notes had alike beset her, and the dark eyes of
the irresistible Charlie Haughton had first taught her pulse to tremble.
And in her hand lies the letter of Charlie Haughton's particular friend.
She breaks the seal. She reads--a declaration!

Five letters in five days did Jasper write. In the course of those
letters, he explains away the causes for suspicion which Colonel Morley
had so ungenerously suggested. He is no longer anonymous; he is J.
Courtenay Smith. He alludes incidentally to the precocious age in which
he had become "lord of himself, that heritage of woe." This accounts for
his friendship with a man so much his senior as the late Charlie. He
confesses that in the vortex of dissipation his hereditary estates have
disappeared; but he has still a genteel independence; and with the woman
of his heart, etc. He had never before known what real love was, etc.
"Pleasure had fired his maddening soul;" "but the heart,--the heart been
lonely still." He entreated only a personal interview, even though to be
rejected,--scorned. Still, when "he who adored her had left but the
name," etc. Alas! alas! as Mrs. Haughton put down epistle the fifth, she
hesitated; and the woman who hesitates in such a case, is sure, at least-
to write a civil answer.

Mrs. Haughton wrote but three lines,--still they were civil; and conceded
an interview for the next day, though implying that it was but for the
purpose of assuring Mr. J. Courtenay Smith, in person, of her unalterable
fidelity to the shade of his lamented friend.

In high glee Jasper showed Mrs. Haughton's answer to Dolly Poole, and
began seriously to speculate on the probable amount of the widow's