straight over to an old-fashioned escritoire which stood beside an open window, and took from a small drawer a package of letters. Not many, nor were they very lengthy, but they had been carefully preserved, bound with the orthodox blue ribbon, and each letter bore the signature, “Yours, as ever, Will.” Seating herself, she glanced over them. Not a word of love in any of them, oh, no! but there was a certain something in the tone, and an occasional word which his[Pg 70] pen let slip, which betrayed strong inner feelings. Their perusal sent the red blood into the reader’s pale cheeks, and made the gray eyes grow misty. When the last one was read, she laid the package upon the escritoire, and going over to the mantel, took from a small silver easel a photograph of Will Venners. One long, long look. I am afraid to attempt to translate the hidden meaning of that eager, devouring gaze. She pressed the pictured face to her lips. [Pg 70] “Good-bye, fair sweet dream,” she whispered, “my dark-eyed Will, good-bye! Yet—no, he was not mine, he was never mine” (the gray eyes flashed wrathfully); “he has only been amusing himself with me, the poor dependent—Mrs. Yorke’s hired companion. He is an outrageous flirt, I have known it all the time, yet still—fool that I have been—I have allowed myself to dream, and to be led on and on, to believe him, to—to—oh, Will, Will, I wish I were dead and could forget you! I shall have to be dead before I can forget you, my beautiful, dark-eyed lover! So that dream is over.” With trembling hands she placed the photograph with its bright smiling face and firm, sweet mouth upon the package of letters, a regular funeral pyre. Then with set lips and cold, shaking hands she placed the entire package in a large envelope, sealed it decisively, and addressed it in a plain hand to “Captain Will Venners, Southern Athletic Club, New Orleans, La.” [Pg 71] [Pg 71] Two hours later it was on its way to New Orleans and its unhappy recipient, who immediately on its receipt decided that this world is a delusion and a snare, and life is not worth living. [Pg 72] [Pg 72]
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