that the original documents were too precious to be intrusted to the post; and then ended by saying that an additional year of celibacy, passed under a closer espionage, and with more severe moral training, might still perhaps make Mary Snow fit for the high destiny which had been promised to her.
The only part of this letter which Felix read twice was that which contained the answer from the angel of light to her lover. 'You have been very wicked to address me,' the angel of light said severely. 'And it is almost impossible that I should ever forgive you!' If only she could have brought herself to end there! But her nature, which the lover had greatly belied in likening it to her name, was not cold enough for this. So she added a few more words very indiscreetly. 'As I want to explain to you why I can never see you again, I will meet you on Thursday afternoon, at half-past four, a little way up Clapham Lane, at the corner of the doctor's wall, just beyond the third lamp.' It was the first letter she had ever written to a lover, and the poor girl had betrayed herself by keeping a copy of it.
And then Graham came to Mary Snow's letter to himself, which, as it was short, the reader shall have entire.
'My dear Mr. Graham,
'I never was so unhappy in my life, and I am sure I don't know how to write to you. Of course I do not think you will ever see me again unless it be to upbraid me for my perfidy, and I almost hope you won't, for I should sink into the ground before your eyes. And yet I didn't mean to do anything very wrong, and when I did meet him I wouldn't as much as let him take me by the hand;—not of my own accord. I don't know what she has said to you, and I think she ought to have let me read it; but she speaks to me now in such a way that I don't know how to bear it. She has rummaged among everything I have got, but I am sure she could find nothing except those two letters. It wasn't my fault that he wrote to me, though I know now I ought not to have met him. He is quite a genteel young man, and very respectable in the medical line; only I know that makes no difference now, seeing how good you have been to me. I don't ask you to forgive me, but it nearly kills me when I think of poor papa.
'Yours always, most unhappy, and very sorry for what I have done,
Poor Mary Snow! Could any man under such circumstances have been angry with her? In the first place if men will mould their wives, they must expect that kind of thing; and then, after all, was there any harm done? If ultimately he did marry Mary Snow, would she make a worse wife because she had met the apothecary's assistant at the corner of the doctor's wall, under the
