“It matters all the world to me,” Lottie cried. Kind as her new guardian was, she could not understand that even when her happiness and her hopes were all crushed, it was a bitterness more exquisite, a sting the girl could not bear to believe that her foundations had been sand, that she had been deluded from the beginning, that the love she trusted in had never been. This sting was so keen and sharp that it woke her from the apathy of despair that was creeping over her. She was roused to struggle, to a passion of resistance and denial. “How can anyone but I know how it was? It all came from that; without that I should never have thought—we should never have met. It was the beginning. How can anyone know but me?” she cried, contending as against some adversary. When the first strain of this conflict was over, she turned, faltering, to her kind guardian. “I had a letter,” she said; “it was the letter. I cannot find it.” She gave her a look of entreaty which went to Mrs. Temple’s heart.
“I have got your letter, Lottie. I have it in my desk, put away. No one has seen it. Let me put it into the fire.”
“Ah, no! perhaps there may be something in it different from what I thought.”
She held out her hands supplicating, and Mrs. Temple went to her desk and took out an envelope. Within was something all stained and blurred. The rain had half washed the cruel words away. Once for all, as Rollo’s last act and deed, and suicidal exit from this history, the letter shall be copied here. Imagine how Lottie had been sitting, all happiness and soft agitation and excitement, waiting for him when this curt epistle came:—
“Dear Lottie,—
“An extraordinary change has happened in my life—not my doing, but that of Providence. It gives me new duties, and a new existence altogether. What we have been thinking of cannot be. It is impossible in every way. For me to do what I promised to you was, when we parted, a sacrifice which I was willing to make, but now is an impossibility. I am afraid you will feel this very much—and don’t think I don’t feel it; but it is an impossibility. I have things to do and a life to lead that makes it impossible. I hope soon someone will be raised up for you when you want it most, to give you the help and assistance I would so gladly have given. Could I but know that you assented to this, that you saw the reason for my conduct, I should be as happy as I now can ever be; and I hope that you will do so when you can look at it calmly. Farewell, dear Lottie, think of me with as little anger as you can, for it is not I, but Providence. Your voice will soon make you independent; it is only a momentary disappointment, I know, and I cannot help it. To do what we settled to do is now an impossibility—an impossibility. Dear Lottie, farewell!
“R. R.”
Underneath, Forgive me was scrawled hastily, as if by an afterthought.
In the calm warm room, in the dull afternoon, under the eyes of her tender nurse, Lottie read over again this letter, which she had read with incredulous wonder, with stupefying misery, by the dim light of the evening under the black waving branches of the leafless trees. She gave a cry of anguish, of horror, of indignation and shame, and with trembling hands folded it up, and put it within its cover, and thrust it back into Mrs. Temple’s keeping. “Oh, take it, take it,” she cried wildly; “keep it, it has killed me. Perhaps—perhaps! the other is true too.”