Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/206

 There is nothing disrepectful in the honest love of a man, even though that man is unknown. I know there are many others who love you, too. I do not know whether there is any one who has won your heart. I do not seek to know. I believe I love you well enough, unselfishly enough, to rejoice when some happy man, who is worthy of you, marries you and takes you away from us. Every womanly woman is happiest in the home of a loving wife, and you are all womanliness. Good-night. Take the roses home with you, and let them speak of rest, and peace, and happy dreams."

There was a puzzled look in Miss Bancroft's brown eyes as she laid the letter down. She speculated over it on her way home that night, and the next day, to her dismay, she discovered that the mystery was making her self-conscious. She found herself looking with suspicious eyes at her good friends on "The Searchlight." The frank and warm camaraderie of her associates, which had been so pleasant a feature of her journalistic life, seemed to her now, in some spots, the cloak of a deeper affection. She tried to analyze the feeling back of the courtesies