"It will be quite safe," said Lottie. "Because of what we used to say about Horace, you mean? But that is just what makes it safe. I know Addie: she won't let any one say that she betrayed me because she wanted Horace herself once. She _said_ she didn't, but I think there was something in it; and if there was, she'd be torn in pieces sooner than let any one say so."
There was a curious straightforwardness about Lottie, even while she schemed and plotted. She calculated the effect of her sister's tenderness for Horace as frankly and openly as one might reckon on a tide or a train, and behaved as if the old saying, "All is fair in love and war," were one of the Thirty-nine Articles.
She wrote her letter without difficulty or hesitation. It was after Horace had joined them, and he laid his hand lightly on her shoulder as she was contemplating her new signature.
"Nearly done?" he said. "And who is to have the benefit of all this?"
"Ah!" There was something of uneasiness in his tone, as if an unpleasant idea had been presented to him. Horace had felt, when he arranged his secret marriage, that he and Lottie were doing a daring and romantic deed, and risking all for love in a truly heroic fashion. But when she told him that she had written to Addie the matter wore a less heroic aspect. Lottie might be unconscious of this in her sweet sincerity, thought the ardent lover, but he remembered old days and felt like anything but a hero.
"Do you want to see what I have said?" She tilted her chair backward and looked up at him with her great clear eyes.
"No," Horace answered with a smile: "I'm not going to pry into your letters." In his heart he knew that it was impossible to put the revelation of their secret to Addie into any words that would not be painful to him to read.
"N-no," said Horace, doubtfully: "I think not."
"It might be considered more civil if you sent one."
"Then say anything you please," was the half-reluctant rejoinder.
"Oh, I'm not going to invent your messages, you lazy boy! A likely story!" Lottie sprang up and put the pen into his hand: "There! write for yourself, sir."
Horace thought that a refusal would betray his feelings about Addie, and he sat down, wondering what he was going to say. But his eye was caught by the last two words of the letter, "LOTTIE THORNE;" and as he looked at them the young husband forgot Addie and his lips curved in a tender smile.
