She closed the letter without rereading it, hastened to send it by the first mail, and then began to count the days which must pass before Stephen's answer could reach her.
Alas for Mercy! this was a sad preparation for the result which was to follow her hastily written words.

It seems sometimes as if fate delighted in lifting us up only to cast us down, in taking us up into a high mountain to show us bright and goodly lands, only to make our speedy imprisonment in the dark valley the harder to bear.
Stephen read this last letter of Mercy's with an ever-increasing sense of resentment to the very end.

For the time being it seemed to actually obliterate every trace of his love for her.

He read the words as wrathfully as if they had been written by a mere acquaintance.
"Good heavens!" he exclaimed.

"'Stolen money! Inform the authorities!' Let her do it if she likes and see how she would come out at the end of that.' And Stephen wrote Mercy very much such a letter as he would have written to a man under the same circumstances.