"To Marguerite Heinrich, if living, and if dead to any of her friends; or, to the Postmaster at Wiesbaden, Germany. If not delivered within two months, return to Arthur Tracy, Tracy Park, Shannondale, Mass., U.S.A."
"Marguerite—Marguerite Heinrich!" Frank repeated. "That is not Gretchen. The letter is not to her."
"I guess it is," Jerry replied. "He told me once that Gretchen was a pet name for Marguerite."
"Yes," Frank returned, with a sigh of disappointment, while to himself he said "It is not Marguerite Tracy and that makes me less a scoundrel than I should otherwise have been." Then turning to Jerry, as he put the letter in his pocket, he said, "thank you for bringing this to me. I had forgotten all about it."
"Mr. Tracy, you mustn't keep the letter. It is not yours—No harm will be done if it goes. Mr. Arthur will never let Maude be wronged. Give it to me, please." Jerry cried in a tone and manner she might have borrowed from Arthur himself, it was so like him when on his dignity.
And Frank felt it, and knew that he had more than a child to deal with, and must use duplicity if he would succeed. So he said to her quietly and naturally:
"Why, how excited you are! Do you think I intend to keep the letter? It is as safe with me as with you. It is true that when I talked with you in the Tramp House I thought it must not be sent, but I have changed my mind, and do not care. I am going to the office, and will take it myself. John is saddling my horse now, and if I hurry I shall be in time for the Western mail. Good-by, and do not look so worried. Do you take me for a villain?"
He was leaving the room as he talked, and before he had finished he was in the hall and near the outer door, leaving Jerry stupefied, and perplexed, and only half re-assured.
"If I had not sold myself to Satan before, I have now, for sure; and still I did not actually tell her that I would post it, though it amounted to that," Frank thought, as he galloped through the park toward the highway which led to the town.
Once he took the letter from his pocket and examined it again, wishing that he knew its contents.