"My Dearest and Best Mrs. Rocke—May God strengthen you to read the few bitter lines I have to write. Most unhappily, Major Warfield did not know exactly who you were when he promised so much. Upon learning your name he withdrew all his promises. At night, in his library, he told me all your early history. Having heard all, the very worst, I believe you as pure as an angel. So I told him! So I would uphold with my life and seal with my death! Trust yet in God, and believe in the earnest respect and affection of your grateful and attached son,
"Herbert Greyson.
"P.S.—For henceforth I shall call you mother."
Quietly she finished reading, pressed the letter again to her lips, reached it to the fire, saw it like her hopes shrivel up to ashes, and then she arose, and with her trembling fingers clinging together, walked up and down the floor.
There were no tears in her eyes, but, oh! such a look of unutterable woe on her pale, blank, despairing face!
Traverse watched her and saw that something had gone frightfully wrong; that some awful revolution of fate or revulsion of feeling had passed over her in this dread hour!
Cautiously he approached her, gently he laid his hand upon her shoulder, tenderly he whispered:
"Mother!"
She turned and looked strangely at him, then exclaiming:
"Oh, Traverse, how happy I was this day week!" She burst into a flood of tears.