Mr. Neeland, it thrills me to pretend to myself that I am actually living in the plot of a romance full of mystery and diplomacy and dangerous possibilities. I hope something will develop, as something always does in novels.
And alas, my imagination, which always has been vivid, needed almost nothing to blaze into flame. It is on fire now; I dream of courts and armies, and ambassadors, and spies; I construct stories in which I am the heroine always—sometimes the interesting and temporary victim of wicked plots; sometimes the all-powerful, dauntless, and adroit champion of honour and righteousness against treachery and evil!
Did you ever suppose that I still could remain such a very little girl? But I fear that I shall never outgrow my imagination. And it needs almost nothing to set me dreaming out stories or drawing pictures of castles and princes and swans and fairies. And even this letter seems a part of some breathlessly interesting plot which I am 151 not only creating but actually a living part of and destined to act in.
Do you want a part in it? Shall I include you? Rather late to ask your permission, for I have already included you. And, somehow, I think the Yellow Devil ought to be included, too.
Please write to me, just once. But don’t speak of the papers which father had, and don’t mention Herr Conrad Wilner’s box if you write. The Princess says your letter might be stolen.
I am very happy. It is rather cold tonight, and presently Suzanne will unhook me and I shall put on such a pretty negligée, and then curl up in bed, turn on my reading light with the pink shade, and continue to read the new novel recommended to me by Princess Naïa, called “Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard.” It is a perfectly darling story, and Anatole France, who wrote it, must be a darling, too. The Princess knows him and promises that he shall dine with us some day. I expect to fall in love with him immediately.
Good night, dear Mr. Neeland. I hope you will write to me.
Your little Gayfield friend grown up,
Ruhannah Carew.
This letter he finally did answer, not voluminously, but with all cordiality. And, in a few days, forgot about it and about the girl to whom it was written. And there was nothing more from her until early summer.
Then came the last of her letters—an entirely mature missive, firm in writing, decisive, concise, self-possessed, eloquent with an indefinite something which betrayed a calmly ordered mind already being moulded by discipline mondaine: