alled, with a start, that no wonder the letter was meagre,
since it was necessarily subject to inspection; and how could the inner
soul be expressed when all must pass under strangers' eyes, who would
think such feelings plausible hypocrisy in a convicted felon. Again she
took it up, to suck to the utmost all that might be conveyed in the
short commonplace sentences, and to gaze at them as if intensity of
study could reveal whether the cheerfulness were real or only assumed.
Be they what they might, the words had only three weeks back been
formed by Leonard's hand, and she pressed her lips upon them in a
fervent agony of affection.

When she roused herself and turned her head, she perceived on Minna's
pillow two eyes above the bed-clothes, intently fixed on her. Should
she see, or should she not see? She believed that the loving heart was
suffering a cruel wrong, she yearned to share all with the child, but
she was chained by the command of one brother, and by that acquiescence
of the other which to her was more than a command. She would not see,
she turned away, and made her preparations for the night without
betraying that she knew that the little one was awake, resuming the
tedious guard on the expression of her face. But when her long
kneeling had ended, and with it that which was scarcely so much
conscious intercession as the resting an intolerable load on One who
alone knew its weight, just as she darkened the room for the night, the
low voice whispered, 'Ave, is it?'--

And Averil crept up to the little bed: 'Yes, Minna; he is well! He
hopes you are bright and happy, but he says it is best you should
forget him.' The brow was cold and clammy, the little frame chill and
trembling, the arms clasped her neck convulsively. She lifted the
child into her own bed, pressed tight to her own bosom, and though no
other word passed between the sisters, that contact seemed to soothe
away the worst bitterness; and Averil slept from the stillness enforced
on her by the heed of not disturbing Minna's sleep.

Little that night had she recked of the plan needing so much
deliberation! When she awoke it was to the consciousness that besides
the arrival of Leonard's letter, something had happened--there was some
perplexity--what was it? And when it came back she was bewildered.
Her own fortune had always appeared to her something to fall back on in
case of want of success, and to expend it thus was binding the whole
famil