"Maria has been her bad angel from her girlhood, and still dominates her.

The poor child's sufferings have hardened her heart and destroyed for a time her sense of right and wrong--that is all." With this thought uppermost in her mind she took the letter from her desk, and stirring the smouldering embers, laid it upon the coals.

The sheet blazed and fell into ashes.
"No one will ever know," she said with a sigh..