"'I was horrified to find on my desk every letter I had written you during my absence returned to me from the Dead Letter Office, as you see.'"
"Good gracious!" cried mother, picking up one and clutching it tight as if she meant to see that it didn't get away again.
"Go on!" cried Shelley.
"'I am enclosing some of them as they came back to me, in proof of my statement. I drove at once to your boarding place and found you had not been there for weeks, and your landlady was distinctly crabbed. Then I went to the college, only to find that you had fallen ill and gone to your home. That threw me into torments, and all that keeps me from taking the first train is the thought that perhaps you refused to accept these letters, for some reason. Shelley, you did not, did you? There is some mistake somewhere, is there not——'"
"One would be led to think so," said father sternly. "Seems as if he might have managed some way——"
"Don't you blame him!" cried Shelley. "Can't you see it's all my fault? He'd been coming regularly, and the other girls envied me; then he just disappeared, and there was no word or anything, and they laughed and whispered until I couldn't endure it; so I moved in with Peter's cousin, as I wrote you; but that left Mrs. Fleet with an empty room in the middle of the term, and it made her hopping mad. I bet anything she wouldn't give the postman my new address, to pay me back. I left it, of course. But if I'd been half a woman, and had the confidence I should have had in myself and in him—— Oh how I've suffered, and punished all of you——!"
"Never you mind about that," said mother, stroking Shelley's hair. "Likely there isn't much in Chicago to give a girl who never had been away from her family before, 'confidence' in herself or any one else. As for him—just disappearing like that, without a word or even a line—— Go on Laddie!"
"'Surely, you knew that I was only waiting the outcome of this trip to tell you how dearly I love you. Surely, you encouraged me in thinking you cared for me a little, Shelley. Only a little will do to begin with——'"
"You see, I DID have something to go on!" cried Shelley, wiping her eyes and straightening up.
"'No doubt you misunderstood and resented my going without coming to explain, and bid you good-bye in person, but Shelley, I SIMPLY DARED NOT. You see, it was this way: I got a cable about the case I was always talking of, and the only man who could give the testimony I MUST HAVE was dying!'"