"I have forgiven her long ago," he answers; "she did not care for me. Better she should fly from me before marriage than after. Thank Heaven she is alive to write at all."
He opens the note. It is very short.
"Dear Aunt Hetty—Dear Uncle Reuben—Dear Uncle Joe—if you will let me, unworthy as I am, still call you by the dear old names. This is the third time I have written since I left home, but I have reason to think you never received the first two letters. I wrote then, as I write now, to beg you on my knees for forgiveness. Oh, to see your dear faces once more—to look again on the peaceful old home. But it cannot be. What shall I say of myself? I am well—I am busy—I am as happy as I deserve, or can ever expect to be. I am safely sheltered in a good man's house. I have been to blame, but oh, not so much as you think. Some day I will come to you and tell you all. Yours,
"Norine.
"P. S.—He is well. I have seen him since I came to New York twice, though he has not seen me. May the good God bless him and forgive me.
"N. K. B."
Richard Gilbert read that postscript and turned away his head. He had been near her, then, twice, and had never known it. And she cared for him enough to pray for him still.
"Here's the other," said Reuben Kent; "that came a week ago."
He laid a large, foreign-looking letter on the desk, with many stamps, and an Italian postmark.
"From Florence," the lawyer said; "how can she have got there?"