you again—to make much of you—to show you in our own poor way how deeply we hold you in our hearts. But if Colonel Ogilvie thinks himself insulted—that is how he regards any neglect however trivial—he acts on that belief, and there is no possible holding him back. He looks on it as a sacred duty to avenge affront. You must not blame him for it. In your peaceful English life you have I think no parallel to the ungovernable waves of passion that rage in the hearts of Kentuckians when they consider their honour is touched. Ah! we poor women know it who have to suffer in silence and wait and wait, and wait; and when the worst is made known to us, to seal up the founts of our grief and pretend that we too agree with the avenging of wrong. For it is our life to be silent in men's quarrels. We are not given a part—any part. We are not supposed to even look on. It is another world from ours, and we have to accept it so. Please God may you never know what it is to be in or on the fringe of a Feud. Well I know its dread, its horror! My own life that years ago was as bright and promising as any young life can be; when the Love that had dawned on my girlhood rose and beat with noonday heat on my young-womanhood made it seem as if heaven had come down to earth. And then the one moment of misunderstanding—the quick accusation—the quicker retort—and my poor heart lying crushed between the bodies of two men whom I loved each in his proper way… Think of what I say, if only on account of what I have suffered.
"Forgive me! But my anxiety lest any such blight should come across a young life that I love far far beyond my own is heavy on me. I have lost myself in sad thoughts of a bitter past… Indeed you must take it that my earnestness in this matter is shown in the lurid light of that past. I have been silent on it always. Never since the black cloud burst over me have I said a word to a soul—not to my sister—nor to Joy whom I adore and whose questioning to me of my 'love affair'—as they still call it when they
