All this came back to Ethelyn, and she seemed to feel again the breath of the September night, and see through the clustering branches the flashing light waiting for her in the dear old room in Chicopee.  She forgot for a moment the stern, dark face watching her so jealously, and so hardening toward her as he saw how pale she grew, and heard her exclamation of surprise when she first recognized the note, and remembered that in turning over the contents of the ebony box she must have dropped it upon the floor.

“Do you still deny all knowledge of Frank’s presence in town?” Richard asked, and his voice recalled Ethelyn from the long ago back to the present time.

He was waiting for her answer; but Ethie had none to give.  Her hot, imperious temper was in the ascendant now.  She was a prisoner for the night; her own husband was the jailer, who she felt was unjust to her, and she would make no explanations, at least not then.  He might think what he liked or draw any inference he pleased from her silence.  And so she made him no reply, except to crush into her pocket the paper which she should have burned on that morning when, crouching on the hearthstone at home, she destroyed all other traces of a past which ought never to have been.  He could not make her speak, and his words of reproach might as well have been given to the winds as to that cold, statue-like woman, who mechanically laid aside the fanciful costume in which she was arrayed, doing everything with a deliberation and coolness more exasperating to Richard than open defiance would have been.  A second knock at the door, and another servant appeared, saying, apologetically, that the note he held in his hand had been left at the office for Mrs. Markham early in the morning, but forgotten till now.

“Give it to me, if you please.  It is mine,” Ethelyn said, and something in her voice and manner kept Richard quiet while she took the offered note and went back to the chandelier where, with a compressed lip and burning cheek, she read the genuine note sent by Frank.

* * * * *

“Dear cousin,” he wrote, “business for a Boston firm has brought me to Camden, where they have had debt standing out.  Through the influence of Harry Clifford, who was a college chum of mine, I have an invitation to Mrs. Miller’s, where I hope to meet yourself and husband.  I should call to-day, but I know just how busy you must be with your costume, which I suppose you wish to keep incog., even from me.  I shall know you, though, at once.  See if I do not.  Wishing to be remembered to the Judge, I am, yours truly,

“Frank Van Buren.”

* * * * *