Page:Wiggin--Ladies-in-waiting.djvu/321

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HER NERVOUS PROSTRATION



transit! You give it to a maid to drop in a pillar post-box, but she may forget and leave it in her pocket, or she may lose it. Or say she drops it in; it must be removed from the box by an ordinary human being who has no conception of the issues involved in the rigid performance of this particular duty. The letter is then taken to the branch office of your section, then to the general post, and then to the railway, where new dangers menace its precious existence. The train may be robbed; and if a single letter is stolen it will be yours to me. No man alive could resist a letter of yours after he had once read one.


Is there not a note of tenderness here, a note that has crept in only during the last few months? But what if there is? It occurred to me after dinner that the question of his feeling for me is not the only, nor even the principal one to be considered. The point under advisement is, shall I allow him to love me when there is something better in store for him?

Miss Blossom had scarcely left my room this evening when I heard a pattering step and a hurried tap on my door. On my saying

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