d said it would be of the greatest comfort and
assistance to you in a difficulty which he foresaw for you. I will leave
you to read it."

And he left the room.

The early December twilight was creeping over everything. Lady Newhaven
took the letter to the window, and after several futile attempts
succeeded in opening it.

It ran as follows:

"It is irreligious to mourn too long for the dead. 'I shall go to
him, but he shall not return to me'--II. Sam. xii. 23. In the
meanwhile, until you rejoin me, I trust you will remember that it
is my especial wish that you should allow one who is in every way
worthy of you to console you for my loss, who will make you as
happy as you both deserve to be. That I died by my own hand you and
your so-called friend Miss West are of course aware. That 'the one
love of your life' drew the short lighter you are perhaps not
aware. I waited two days to see if he would fulfil the compact, and
as he did not--I never thought he would--I retired in his place. I
present to you this small piece of information as a
wedding-present, which, if adroitly handled, may add to the harmony
of domestic life. And if by any chance he should have conceived the
dastardly, the immoral idea of deserting you in favor of some
mercenary marriage--of which I rather suspect him--you will find
this piece of information invaluable in restoring his allegiance at
once. He is yours by every sacred tie, and no treacherous female
friend must wrest him from you.

"NEWHAVEN."

Lady Newhaven put the letter in her pocket, and then fainted away, with
her fair head on the window-ledge.

CHAPTER L

"There cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is."

The Bishop's sister, Miss Keane, whose life was a perpetual orgy of
mothers' meetings and G.F.S. gatherings, was holding a district
visitors' working party in the drawing-room at the Palace. The ladies
knitted and stitched, while one of their number heaped fuel on the flame
of their enthusiasm by reading aloud the "History of the Diocese of
Southminster."

Miss Keane took but little heed of the presence of Rachel and Hester in
her brother's house. Those who work mechanically on fixed lines seem, as
a rule, to miss the pith of life. She was kind when she remembered them,
but her heart was where her treasure was--namely, in her escritoire,
with