When Hetta Carbury received that letter from her lover which was given to the reader some chapters back, it certainly did not tend in any way to alleviate her misery.  Even when she had read it over half-a-dozen times, she could not bring herself to think it possible that she could be reconciled to the man.  It was not only that he had sinned against her by giving his society to another woman to whom he had at any rate been engaged not long since, at the very time at which he was becoming engaged to her,—­but also that he had done this in such a manner as to make his offence known to all her friends.  Perhaps she had been too quick;—­but there was the fact that with her own consent she had acceded to her mother&rsquo...