"Did right, as you always do," he answered, kissing her cheek and saying good-night, and thus dismissing her, with an evident eagerness to read the note, not lost upon Paula, and which left her no alternative but to leave him.
He opened the envelope and read:
"Dear Mark—Your letter came this morning, and I have just learned that you will be home to-night. I cannot express to you how glad I shall be to see you again. Before we meet in the presence of others, I hope to see you alone. Your letter, dear Mark, evidently delayed by being addressed in Mr. Winter's care, has cost me some tears, both of joy and sorrow. I am impatient to see you, for it seems to me that to you, before to any other, except to Paula (who would have known by intuition), I should disclose the happiness that has come to me in my engagement to Leonard. It is but two days old, and except to Paula, is known only to ourselves. Dear Mark, it has not been easy to write these few lines. I wish I could express in them how sincerely I honor and love you, and how I wish for your happiness. I have commenced to pray, and the first time I knelt to heaven I prayed for you; and so long as I shall continue to pray—and I think that will be always now—I shall not forget to beg that you be made happy. I hope you will wander no more, but be oftener with those that love you and who need you more than you perhaps know; and as I shall live either in Hampton or Easthampton, and as I must ever regard you as one of my earliest and my best friend, I hope we shall see each other often.
"Natalie."
"Oh, Mark, your happiness is at Stormpoint. No one is better, more loving, or more lovable than she."
The letter stunned him. He might, had he known women as well as he (being young) believed he did—he might have read the truth in every line. He might have seen that were he to rouse his energies and plead his cause, he could win it, even yet. He might have heard the unconscious cry for rescue from an engagement contracted before his letter had reached her; he might have seen, in the pains she had taken to tell him that such was the case, his excuse and hers for asserting his rights against Leonard. These things were plain enough; perhaps the writer had intended that they should be; not consciously, indeed; but from that inner being who is part of all of us, the desperate hope of the girl's heart had not been hidden as she wrote, nor was her pen entirely uncontrolled by it.
But the postscript obscured his vision. He laughed contemptuously and thought, as men will think, "It is thus that woman estimates love. She is sorry for me, and suggests that the consolation I may need I shall find in Paula!" He did not recognize that in the postscript was the real dishonesty of the letter; that it was the salve to the conscience of the writer, believing that in the letter itself she had said too much, whereas she had said too little for the perception of a man in the haze of jealousy. Such gleams of truth as might otherwise have been visible to Mark could not penetrate that dishonest veiling of the woman's heart.
CHAPTER XXI.
A MAN ABOUT TO MEET A MAID.
One may approach the White House by way of the High Street of Easthampton, of which thoroughfare the dwelling in question is a conspicuous ornament; but for such as prefer a more secluded road, a grassy lane behind the houses affords direct access to Miss Claghorn's garden.
Mark chose the lane. Since, in obedience to Natalie's request, he must see her, he hoped to find her in the garden, where there would be less danger of interruption.