It brought back so vividly the day when she received it--six or seven years ago, the lazy September day, when the Chicopee hills wore the purplish light of early autumn, and the air was full of golden sunshine.

It was a few weeks after the childish betrothal among the huckleberry hills, and Frank had come up to spend a week with a boy friend of his, who lived across the river.

There was to be an exhibition in the white schoolhouse, in the river district, and Frank had written, urging her to come, and asking that Aunt Barbara should be left behind--"the old maid," he sometimes called her to his cousin, thinking it sounded smart and manlike.

Aunt Barbara had stayed at home from choice, sending her niece in charge of Susie Granger's mother; but the long walk home, after the exercises were over, the lingering, loitering walk across the causeway, where the fog was riding so damply, the stopping on the bridge, and looking down into the deep, dark water, where the stars were reflected so brightly, the slow climbing of the depot hill, and the long talk by the gate beneath the elms, whose long arms began to drop great drops of dew on Ethie's head ere the interview was ended--all this had been experienced with Frank, whose arm was around the young girl's waist, and whose hand was clasping hers, as with boyish pride and a laughable effort to seem manly, he talked of "our engagement," and even leaped forward in fancy to the time "when we are married." All this came back to Ethelyn, and she seemed to feel again the breath of the September night, and see through the clustering branches the flashing light waiting for her in the dear old room in Chicopee.

She forgot for a moment the stern, dark face watching her so jealously, and so hardening toward her as he saw how pale she grew, and heard her exclamation of surprise when she first recognized the note, and remembered that in turning over the contents of the ebony box she must have dropped it upon the floor.
"Do you still deny all knowledge of Frank's presence in town ?" Richard asked, and his voice recalled Ethelyn from the long ago back to the present time.
He was waiting for her answer; but Ethie had none to give.