up a
nobility of character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind.

'God forgive me!' he said tremulously. 'I have been a wicked wretch. I
did not know she was such a treasure as this!'

He reassured her instantly; declaring that he would not of course desert
her, that he would provide a home for her somewhere. Meanwhile she was
to stay where she was as long as her mistress would allow her.

But a misfortune supervened in this direction. Whether an inkling of
Anna's circumstances reached the knowledge of Mrs. Harnham's husband or
not cannot be said, but the girl was compelled, in spite of Edith's
entreaties, to leave the house. By her own choice she decided to go back
for a while to the cottage on the Plain. This arrangement led to a
consultation as to how the correspondence should be carried on; and in
the girl's inability to continue personally what had been begun in her
name, and in the difficulty of their acting in concert as heretofore, she
requested Mrs. Harnham--the only well-to-do friend she had in the
world--to receive the letters and reply to them off-hand, sending them on
afterwards to herself on the Plain, where she might at least get some
neighbour to read them to her, if a trustworthy one could be met with.
Anna and her box then departed for the Plain.

Thus it befel that Edith Harnham found herself in the strange position of
having to correspond, under no supervision by the real woman, with a man
not her husband, in terms which were virtually those of a wife,
concerning a condition that was not Edith's at all; the man being one for
whom, mainly through the sympathies involved in playing this part, she
secretly cherished a predilection, subtle and imaginative truly, but
strong and absorbing. She opened each letter, read it as if intended for
herself, and replied from the promptings of her own heart and no other.

Throughout this correspondence, carried on in the girl's absence, the
high-strung Edith Harnham lived in the ecstasy of fancy; the vicarious
intimacy engendered such a flow of passionateness as was never exceeded.
For conscience' sake Edith at first sent on each of his letters to Anna,
and even rough copies of her replies; but later on these so-called copies
were much abridged, and many letters on both sides were not sent on at
all.

Though selfish, and, superficially at least, infested with the
self-indulgent vices of artificial society, there was a substratum of
honesty a