Chapter 9

A STRANGE LETTER AND A PROPOSED VISIT TO LONDON.

Primrose was always direct in her movements--she made up her mind quickly; from her earliest childhood she was in the habit of acting with decision.

After her short interview with Mr. Danesfield she went straight home, and without paying any attention to the clear voice of her pet Daisy, who called to her from the garden, or to Jasmine's little impatient--"Sister, I want you to help me to arrange the trimming on my new black skirt," she ran upstairs, and locked herself into her mother's room.

There she once more opened the old davenport, and took from it the thick packet, which contained a shabby little desk, inside of which lay a letter directed to herself.

Now at last she opened the letter, and in her own great perplexity read the message from the grave.

The letter was dated about three months back, and was in her mother's neatest and most easily read writing.

"My dear daughter," it began, "I have no present reason to suppose that my life will be cut short, therefore I cannot tell whether this letter will be read by you now, while you are young, or years hence, when your youth is over.

"One thing I have resolved--you shall not know the little secret it contains during my lifetime. I keep it from you, my darling, because I could not bear you to speak of it to me, because at the time it gave me such agony that I have locked it up in my heart, and no one, not even my own child, must open the doors where my dead secret lies.

"Primrose, whenever I die, this letter will reach you--you will find it in the ordinary course of things in my cabinet; but even in this