ds
him, at first, an independent front which would preserve her secret
anxiety until the time should come when she might yield herself to his
arms and tell him all. For hours she wrote letter after letter,
destroying them as quickly as she wrote, as she found that she had but
swayed pendulum fashion between overtness and coldness. Some of the
letters were so chilly in tone that she felt they would defeat their own
object. Others were so frankly warm in the expression of--regard she
called it, that with burning blushes she destroyed them at once at the
candle before her.

At last she made up her mind. Just as she had done when a baby she
realised that the opposing forces were too strong for her; she gave in
gracefully. It would not do to deal directly in a letter with the matter
in hand. She would write to Leonard merely asking him to see her. Then,
when they were together without fear of interruption, she would tell him
her views.

She got as far as 'Dear Mr. Leonard,' when she stood up, saying to
herself:

'I shall not be in a hurry. I must sleep on it before I write!' She
took up the novel she had been reading in the afternoon, and read on at
it steadily till her bedtime.

That night she did not sleep. It was not that she was agitated. Indeed,
she was more at ease than she had been for days; she had after much
anxious thought made up her mind to a definite course of action.
Therefore her sleeplessness was not painful. It was rather that she did
not want to sleep, than that she could not. She lay still, thinking,
thinking; dreaming such dreams as are the occasions of sanctified privacy
to her age and sex.

In the morning she was no worse for her vigil. When at luncheon-time
Aunt Laetitia had returned she went into all the little matters of which
she had to report. It was after tea-time when she found herself alone,
and with leisure to attend to what was, she felt, directly her own
affair. During the night she had made up her mind exactly what to say to
Leonard; and as her specific resolution bore the test of daylight she was
satisfied. The opening words had in their inception caused her some
concern; but after hours of thought she had come to the conclusion that
to address, under the circumstance, the recipient of the letter as 'Dear
Mr. Everard' would hardly do. The only possible justification of her
unconventional act was that there existed already a friendship, an
intimacy of years, since ch