w hopes, new fears. Thyrza's letter arrived. It was delivered
in the afternoon, and Lydia found it pushed under her door when she
returned from work. She listened for Gilbert's coming home, then ran
down to the sitting-room, and, without speaking, put the letter into
his hand. Mrs. Grail was present.

'I knew it had come,' she said, in her low voice, which of late had
begun to quaver with the feebleness of age. 'Mrs. Jarmey brought it
here to show me, because she guessed who it was from.'

Gilbert said very few words, and when he returned the letter, Lydia
went upstairs with it, to nurse the treasure in solitude. It lay on her
lap, and again and again she read it through. Every word she probed for
meanings, every stroke of the pen she dwelt on as possibly revealing
something. 'I have been poorly, dear, but I am quite well again now.'
That sentence was the one her eye always turned to. The writing was not
quite the same as Thyrza's used to be; it showed weakness, she thought.
She had foreseen this, that Thyrza would fall ill; in fear of that she
had deprived herself of all save the barest necessaries, that she might
save a little money. But strangers had tended her sister, and with her
gladness at receiving news mingled jealousy of the hands that had been
preferred to her own. Only now the bitterness of separation seemed to
be tasted to the full.

At half-past nine she went downstairs again, knowing that she would
find Gilbert alone. He was sitting unoccupied, as always now in the
evenings, for his books gathered dust on the unregarded shelves. Seeing
that she had the letter with her, he held out his hand for it in
silence.

'There's one thing I'm afraid of,' Lydia began, when she had glanced at
him once or twice. 'Do you think it's friends of _his_ that she's with?'

He shook his head.

'He would have told me if he'd found her.'

'Are you quite sure?'

'Yes, I am sure. He wouldn't have said where she was, very likely, but
he'd tell us that she was found.'

Gilbert had reason to think of Lydia as a great power on his side. The
girl was now implacable against Egremont. She had ceased to utter her
thoughts about him, since she knew that they pained her friend, but in
her heart she kept a determined enmity. The fact of Thyrza's love in no
way influenced her: her imagination was not strong enough to enable her
to put herself in Thyrza's place and see Egremont as her sister saw
him. With the narrowness of view whic