called for further and concrete presentiment, he could—looking on the fearless and hopeful countenance of that other Laurence Rivers—offer it in his own person. Involuntarily he shivered, since, for the moment, his tenure of name, person and individuality, seemed so questionable, a matter of sufferance merely—amounting to no more, in fact, than a remote reversionary interest in another man's goods.

At random he picked up a couple of packets of letters off the top of the escritoire, where he had laid them, and moved across to the window. It was not wholesome to look at those happy faces—one his own—any longer. The letters tied with a pink ribbon were in a woman's hand, sloped and pointed, but with a peculiar elegance of lettering and evenness of line. Then for an instant he debated, questioning whether he could without breach of honour, and of the respect in which all decent-minded persons hold the dead, open and read these letters. The position was extraordinary to the point of abrogating accustomed rules of conduct; yet he felt a certain delicacy in reading a woman's letters and surprising the secrets of her heart. But as he turned them over, glancing at the first page of each, he perceived that in every case they were addressed to himself; for at the top corner of each was written—"To Laurence Rivers, Esq.," and below either "Dear cousin" or "Dear love." Then the irony of the thing taking him, he smiled to himself and said:

"Oh, well, come along, surely I have a right to the smooth as well as the rough. If I am such a very second-hand affair any way, with not so much as a name or face of my own to be proud of, I'll at least have the advantages of my disabilities. I will know how my other, first-hand, self was made love to and made love."

Yet no sooner had he begun to read, than he became aware that he knew that already. For as he perused the thin, deeply-creased pages, he felt, with a certainty independent of and passing all proof, that he had read these sweet effusions, these innocent chronicles of home life, of meetings and partings, pretty pleasures and junketings, not once but many times already. He remembered them. He could almost tell what words would meet his eye as he straightened and turned the fluttering sheets of paper.

"—I am much concerned," wrote Agnes Rivers, "that so many months must elapse before I can again receive news of you. I preach Patience to myself; but that virtue, though a good servant, is but a sorrowful master. I am pursued by fears on your account, which often move me to tears when I am alone, or have retired to my chamber 

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