"I thought my love would not be the first to 'find out the way'—even then when I wrote it! Faith—do you know that there is nobody in the world just like him? because if you do not—you will find it out!—I mean! like Endecott—not like Love. My dear, I beg pardon for my pronoun! But just how I have loved you all these months, for making him so happy, I cannot tell you.
"And I cannot write to-day—about anything,—my thoughts are in too uneven a flow to find their way to the end of my pen, and take all possible flights instead. Dear Faith, you must wait for a letter till the next steamer. And you cannot miss it—nor anything else, with Endecott there,—it seems to me that to be even in the same country with him is happiness.
"You must love me too, Faith, and not think me a stranger,—and let me be your (because I am Endy's)
"PET."
Faith took a great deal more time than was necessary for the reading of this letter. Very much indeed she would have liked to do as her correspondent confessed she had done, and cry—but there was no sign of such an inclination. She only sat perfectly moveless, bending over her letter. At last suddenly looked up and gave it to Mr. Linden.
"Well?" he said with a smile at her as he took it.
"You'll see—" she said, a little breathlessly. And still holding her hand fast, Mr. Linden read the letter, quicker than she had done, and without comment—unless when his look shewed that it touched him.
"You will love her, Faith!" he said as he folded the letter up again,—"in spite of all your inclinations to the contrary!"
"Do you think that is in the future tense? But I am afraid," added
Faith,—"she thinks too much of me now."
"She does not think as much of you as I do," Mr. Linden said, with a look and smile that covered all the ground of present or future fear. "And after all it is a danger which you will share with me. It is one of Pet's loveable feelings to think too much of some people whom she loves just enough."