Ethie was generous and noble after it was all over, if she was a little hot at times.

That's what I was going to say when you stopped me so sudden." Aunt Barbara looked a little aggrieved at being caught up so quickly by her sister, who continued: "She was a Bigelow, and everybody knows what kind of blood that is.

She was too sensitive, and had too nice a perception of what was proper to be thrown among"-- heathen, she was going to add, but something in Aunt Barbara's blue eyes kept her in check, and so she abruptly turned to Richard and asked, "Did she leave no message, no reason why she went ?" Richard could have boasted his Markham blood had he chosen, and the white heats to which that was capable of being roused; but he was too utterly broken to feel more than a passing flash of resentment for anything which had yet been said, and after a moment's thought, during which he was considering the propriety of showing Mrs.Van Buren what Ethie had written of Frank, he held the letter to her, saying, "She left this.

Read it if you like.

It's a part of my punishment, I suppose, that her friends should know all." With a stately bow Mrs.Van Buren took the letter and hastily read it through, her lip quivering a little and her eyelids growing moist as Ethie described the dreariness of that dreadful day when "Aunt Van Buren came up from Boston and broke her heart." And as she read how much poor Ethie had loved Frank, the cold, proud woman would have given all she had if the past could be undone and Ethie restored to her just as she was that summer nine years ago, when she came from the huckleberry hills and stood beneath the maples.