"I could not ask a better, Adelaide. I only wish it were in my power to make obedience always easy and pleasant to her, poor darling."
"I hope you have something for me there, my dear," Rose remarked to her husband at the breakfast-table the next morning, as he looked over the mail just brought in by his man John.
"Yes, there is one for you; from your mother, I think; and, Elsie, do you know the handwriting of this?"
"No, papa, it is quite strange to me," she answered, taking the letter he held out to her, and which bore her name and address on the back, and examining it critically.
"And the post-mark tells you nothing either?"
"No, sir; I cannot quite make it out, but it doesn't seem to be any place where I have a correspondent."
"Well, open it and see from whom it comes. But finish your breakfast first."
Elsie laid the letter down by her plate, and putting aside, for the present, her curiosity in regard to it, went on with her meal. "From whom can it have come?" she asked herself, while listening half absently to extracts from Mr. Allison's epistle; "not from him surely, the hand is so very unlike that of the one he sent me in Lansdale."
"You have not looked at that yet," her father said, seeing her take it up as they rose from the table. "You may do so now. I wish to know who the writer is. Don't read it till you have found that out," he added, leading her to a sofa in the next room, and making her sit down there, while he stood by her side.
She felt that his eye was upon her as she broke open the envelope and, taking the letter from it, glanced down the page, then in a little flutter of surprise and perplexity turned to the signature. Instantly her face flushed crimson, she trembled visibly, and her eyes were lifted pleadingly to his.