Thelma forced herself to smile. "You can go, by all means, Britta! But I thought you did not like Lady Winsleigh's French maid?"
"I don't like her much," Britta admitted--"still, she means to be kind and agreeable, I think. And"--here she eyed Thelma with a mysterious and important air--"I want to ask her a question about something very particular."
"Then, go and stay as long as you like, dear," said Thelma, a sudden impulse of affection causing her to caress softly her little maid's ruffled brown curls, "I shall not be back till--till quite late. And when you return from the post, I shall be gone--so--good-bye!"
"Good-bye!" exclaimed Britta wonderingly. "Why, where are you going? One would think you were starting on a long journey. You speak so strangely, Fröken!"
"Do I?" and Thelma smiled kindly. "It is because my head aches, I suppose. But it is not strange to say good-bye, Britta!"
Britta caught her hand. "Where are you going?" she persisted.
"To see some friends," responded Thelma quietly. "Now do not ask any more questions, Britta, but go and post my letter. I want father to get it as soon as possible, and you will lose the post if you are not very quick."
Thus reminded, Britta hastened off, determining to run all the way, in order to get back before her mistress left the house. Thelma, however, was too quick for her. As soon as Britta had gone, she took the letter she had written to Philip, and slipped it within the pages of a small volume of poems he had lately been reading. It was a new book entitled "Gladys the Singer," and its leading motif was the old, never-exhausted subject of a woman's too faithful love, betrayal, and despair. As she opened it, her eyes fell by chance on a few lines of hopeless yet musical melancholy, which, like a sad song heard suddenly, made her throat swell with rising yet restrained tears. They ran thus:-"Oh! I can drown, or, like a broken lyre, Be thrown to earth, or cast upon a fire,-- I can be made to feel the pangs of death, And yet be constant to the quest of breath,-- Our poor pale trick of living through the lies We name Existence when that 'something' dies Which we call Honor. Many and many a way Can I be struck or fretted night or day In some new fashion,--or condemn'd the while To take for food the semblance of a smile,-- The left-off rapture of a slain caress,--"