ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, August 3, 18-. MAURICE KIRKWOOD, ESQ.
DEAR SIR,--You have received, I trust, a card of invitation to the meetings of our Society, but I think we have not yet had the pleasure of seeing you at any of them. We have supposed that we might be indebted to you for a paper read at the last meeting, and listened to with much interest. As it was anonymous, we do not wish to be inquisitive respecting its authorship; but we desire to say that any papers kindly sent us by the temporary residents of our village will be welcome, and if adapted to the wants of our Association will be read at one of its meetings or printed in its records, or perhaps both read and printed. May we not hope for your presence at the meeting, which is to take place next Wednesday evening? Respectfully yours,
LURIDA VINCENT, Secretary of the Pansophian Society.
To this note the Secretary received the following reply: MISS LURIDA VINCENT,
DEAR MISS VINCENT,--I have received the ticket you refer to, and desire to express my acknowledgments for the polite attention. I regret that I have not been and I fear shall not be able to attend the meetings of the Society; but if any subject occurs to me on which I feel an inclination to write, it will give me pleasure to send a paper, to be disposed of as the Society may see fit.
Very respectfully yours, MAURICE KIRKWOOD.
“He says nothing about the authorship of the paper that was read the other evening,” the Secretary said to herself. “No matter,--he wrote it,--there is no mistaking his handwriting. We know something about him, now, at any rate. But why doesn't he come to our meetings? What has his antipathy to do with his staying away? I must find out what his secret is, and I will. I don't believe it's harder than it was to solve that prize problem which puzzled so many teachers, or than beating Crakowitz, the great chess-player.”
To this enigma, then, The Terror determined to bend all the faculties which had excited the admiration and sometimes the amazement of those who knew her in her school-days. It was a very delicate piece of business; for though Lurida was an intrepid woman's rights advocate, and believed she was entitled to do almost everything that men dared to, she knew very well there were certain limits which a young woman like herself must not pass.