Montague Delaforce, which would have astonished
none more than that young gentleman
himself, had he known it. He had been twice
plucked at Cambridge for his little-go.

In the midst of this incipient love-making,
Ralph Jessett came shambling over with a
sad face, to tell Miss Letty that her
father was ill, and she must go home. The
carriage would come for her in a few
minutes; and Miss Letty had better pack up
her things before it did come, for they wanted
her back directly.

As Letty was an affectionate daughter, she
began to cry violently on receiving this news.
Ralph was overwhelmed at the sight of her
grief. He had never known that she was so
fond of her father; and he called himself all
sorts of names, like dolt and idiot, because he
had told her too suddenly, and had shocked
and scared her. Letty only sobbed the
more, as she turned her back full on poor old
Ralph, and clung round Julia's neck, as if
Julia had been her guardian angel entering
on a term of banishment. And Julia cried
too, and said, "ssh! ssh!" patting Miss
Letty's back with both her hands. It was a
formula of consolation that had not much
effect on the patient. And then the carriage
came, and the fatal moment; and poor Miss
Letty was obliged to say farewell; Mr.
Montague looking the deepest tragedy
as he handed her into the barouche;
and Ralph feeling somehow that he had
incurred everybody's displeasure, and stood
at that moment in the position of a moral
Ishmael: which position Miss Letty kept
him in all the way home—it was eight miles
—not deigning to look at him nor speak to
him once during that whole drive, but
making him profoundly sensible that she
considered herself injured by him, and that
she was his victim and his prisoner.

"Ralph," she said the next day, "I
behaved very ill to you yesterday."

"No, Miss Letty; not ill to me. You
were only unhappy, and so behaved ill to
yourself."

"Nonsense, Ralph; you know that I did.
Will you forgive me?"

"Yes, Miss Letty, if you did; but"—

"Well, never mind buts. Will you walk
over to Delaforce House for me, this afternoon?"
She spoke very quickly, and looked
down.

"Yes, Miss Letty."

''And take a letter from me to Julia? I
want to tell her that papa is better, and that
it is nothing catching."

"But who ever said it was?" asked Ralph,
in astonishment. "I did not bring that
message yesterday."

"Never mind," retorted Letty; "take the
letter, and don't ask questions."

Which closed Ralph's mouth at once.

So the letter was written, and Ralph set
out through the woods to Delaforce House;
miserably unhappy, and with the kind of
feeling he would have had if there had come
stealing on a perpetual eclipse of the sun.
But he got to the house at last, and delivered
his credentials; and Miss Julia made her
ringlets dance as she ran off to Montague,
saying, "Oh, Monty, we can go to the Manor
when we like!" A piece of news that made
that young gentleman smile below his
moustache gaily; and declare his intention of
riding over to-morrow. And when his sister
had embodied that intention in a small three-
cornered note, Ralph was sent home again,
dimly conscious that he had been
instrumental in a plot, he did not know how.

But the plot went on, under the same
instrumentality. Ralph Jessett was soon installed
regular postman between the Manor House
and the Delaforces; and did actually go
twice in one day to please Miss Letty. He
walked thirty-two miles on a hot summer's
day, to the end that Mr. Montague Delaforce
should know the right meaning of this phrase:
"You are very cruel to doubt me. If I tell
you to wait until papa is better, it is not that
I am indifferent to your feelings, but only
more careful of the future than you are;"
which, Mr. Montague—being a youth more
gifted with beauty than with brains, and
being moreover one of those sensitive people
who are always taking offence at nothing—
considered to be a phrase wounding to his
dignity and common sense; requiring
explanation before things could go on any
farther. And thus matters continued. When
Mr. Temple grew better, the plot
exploded, the mystery was dissolved, and Mr.
Montague Delaforce, asking for the honour of
Miss Temple's hand, and accepted, opened
Ralph's eyes as with the touch of a magic
wand. And, amidst a storm of agony and
grief such as one would not have imagined
that such a gentle creature as he could have
felt, he came to the knowledge suddenly
that he had been unconsciously the instrument
of his own sorrow—the innocent suicide
of his own happiness. So long as Miss
Letty was unmarried, and he, Ralph Jessett,
could live near her and with her; could read
to her, wait on her, do her pleasure, attend
to her commands, devote his whole life to
her, and live as a slave in the shadow
of the altar, he would have been quite as
blessed as he desired—and, as he thought,
deserved—in his unconscious love and
unselfish adoration. For, Ralph thought it was
joy and honour enough for him to be allowed
to love Letty in his own way. But now—
taken from him, and married to a man
he thought as little worthy of her, in spite
of his curling hair and grand moustache, as
if he had been a blackamoor from Africa:
it was more like his own death than
her marriage. If Mr. Montague had
been better; if he had been wiser, and
older, and steadier—then indeed; but as it
was! Oh! his queen, his darling, his little
Letty, who used to sit on his knee, and ask