Once Bound by Forbidden Love, Now Set Free

At twenty, Sylvia Peterson's secret is exposed: hundreds of unsent love letters to Cedar Adams, the uncle who raised her after her parents died. His fiancée, Monica Miller, finds them and forces Cedar to send Sylvia abroad. Illness brings her home, where Monica spreads rumors that she is pregnant, drags her to a clinic, and locks her in an old house. Sylvia dies there, abandoned, and Cedar never comes.

She wakes reborn on the day the letters are discovered. This time she will not love him. She calmly calls her professor and joins a mountain field team, then faces Monica with a smile, calling her "Auntie" and claiming the letters were written by friends smitten with Cedar.

But Cedar comes to her door that night, furious, warning her to stay away from Monica and to abandon her improper thoughts. Sylvia lowers her head and says nothing, while Monica's suspicions only soften, not vanish.