THE MISSING LETTER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue III, 31 March 1891, Page 4

THE MISSING LETTER.

An old couple are playing backgammon n a French chateau, in the evening of their i ves — the lady silver-haired, though on her ace are the relics of an incomparable >eauty, and her companion courtier-like in ivery sense of the word. The game is inter•upted by the arrival of a friend, who is ap>arently a stranger to both, and fails to ecognise in either the least trace of prior mowledge or past companionship. The conversation among the old people tuins upon he advantages and disadvantages of matrinony, and the possibility of such a contraliction as constant man. The old lady, vith playful courtesy, twits the stranger vith the fact that he is still a bachelor, and >ids him tell how it could have happened hat, with all his chances and opportunities, le was proof against every seduction, and esisted the fatal influence of love. Wherejpon. with a heavy sigh, the stranger )achelor takes up the parable, and asks >ardon for boring them with the prelude of i romance. Of course he had loved — who had not ? — md equally as a matter of course, she vhom he loved was fickle like her sex and intrue to her promises. There had been in evening years ago, when only the one vord required to be spoken ; friendship had ipened into a very sincere affection on both sides, as he was vain enough to imagine. 3ne night at a ball he, full of love and moved up with confidence, had presented jhe woman he had hoped to marry with a iouquet of yellow roses, in the heart of vhich he had concealed a letter asking that atal question put with so much anxiety, md attended with such natural doubt. This vas to be the love-signal. If the bouquet vas carried that evening it was to be taken is a sign of consent ; if not, as a kindly pken of rejection. The ball came, and the jouquet of yellow roses was not there; :oldness gave rise to misunderstanding, :ynicism changed into bitterness, and the nan who had been so ardent and hopeful luitted the scene, never saw the lady any nore, and tried to hide his disappointment n the activity and enterprise of life. " That vas all my romance," laughed the unsus>ecting stranger, who. could not account for silence, or for the fact that the Iver-haired old lady without a word had ift tlie room. Eventually she returned earing in her "hand an old dusty box, fcichshe placed silently on the table and pened with a silver key hanging at her ■foist. "A bouquet of yellow roses," she ■nrmured to herself, and, looking for the Wst time amid the shrivelled petals, she ||md a forgotten letter as yellow as the Rwershad been i-. ''ie'..- early youth. A"-i > B|h3vgtuet a.'ter tnis long parting, and i Kf« mVsterj' was at last explained too late