Lexy stared at her with such an expression of amazement and dismay that Mrs. Enderby smiled.

“You are very young,” she said. “You wish always for the dramatic. When you have lived as long as I, you will see that such things do not happen.”

She spoke kindly, and Lexy saw in her dark eyes a look of weariness and pain.

“No, my child,” she went on. “In this life it is always the same things that happen again and again. At twenty, one breaks the heart for a man; at forty, one breaks the heart for one’s child. There is only that—and money. Love and money—nothing else!”

Lexy felt extraordinarily sorry for Mrs. Enderby; but even yet she couldn’t quite believe that Caroline could have done such a thing.

“But do you mean that she’s really—that she’s—” she began.

“See, then!” said Mrs. Enderby. “Here is the letter!”

Lexy took it from her, and read:

CONTENTS

Chere Maman:

Chere Maman

I only beg you and papa to forgive me for what I have done; but I knew that if I told you, you would not have let me go. When you get this

I shall be married. To-morrow I shall write again, to tell you where I am, and to beg you to let me bring my husband to you.

Oh, please, dear, dear mother and father, forgive me!

“You see!” said Mrs. Enderby. “It is as I told you.”

There were tears in Lexy’s eyes as she put the letter back into the envelope.

“It doesn’t seem a bit like Caroline, though,” she remarked.

Mrs. Enderby smiled again, faintly, and held out her hand for the letter. Lexy returned it to her, with an almost mechanical glance at the postmark—“Wyngate, Connecticut.”

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