Nay, I was rejoiced when, a few hours after the worst was over, a letter from Zeno informed me that he and his daughter would come to see us the same evening.

But the letter itself"-- and her voice began to quiver with indignation--"compelled us to beg him not to come.

It is scarcely credible--and I should do better not to pour fresh oil on my wrath--but he bade us 'rejoice'; three, four, five times he repeated the cruel words.

And he wrote in a pompous strain of the bliss and rapture which awaited our lost child--and this to a mother whose heart had been utterly broken but a few hours before by a fearful stroke of Fate! He would meet the bereaved, grieving, lonely mourner with a smile on his lips! Rejoice! This climax of cruelty or aberration has parted us forever.

Why, our black gardener, whose god is a tree-stump that bears only the faintest likeness to humanity, melted into tears at the news; and Zeno, our brother, the uncle of that broken dower, could be glad and bid us rejoice! My husband thinks that hatred and the long-standing feud prompted his pen.