g ways to forward to her those which I received from
him, without risk of discovery. Hannah was the medium we employed, as
Mary felt it would not be wise for her to come too often to my house.
To this girl's charge, then, I gave such notes as I could not forward in
any other way, secure in the reticence of her nature, as well as in her
inability to read, that these letters addressed to Mrs. Amy Belden would
arrive at their proper destination without mishap. And I believe they
always did. At all events, no difficulty that I ever heard of arose out
of the use of this girl as a go-between.

But a change was at hand. Mr. Clavering, who had left an invalid mother
in England, was suddenly summoned home. He prepared to go, but, flushed
with love, distracted by doubts, smitten with the fear that, once
withdrawn from the neighborhood of a woman so universally courted as
Mary, he would stand small chance of retaining his position in her
regard, he wrote to her, telling his fears and asking her to marry him
before he went.

"Make me your husband, and I will follow your wishes in all things,"
he wrote. "The certainty that you are mine will make parting possible;
without it, I cannot go; no, not if my mother should die without the
comfort of saying good-bye to her only child."

By some chance she was in my house when I brought this letter from the
post-office, and I shall never forget how she started when she read it.
But, from looking as if she had received an insult, she speedily settled
down into a calm consideration of the subject, writing and delivering
into my charge for copying a few lines in which she promised to accede
to his request, if he would agree to leave the public declaration of the
marriage to her discretion, and consent to bid her farewell at the door
of the church or wherever the ceremony of marriage should take place,
never to come into her presence again till such declaration had been
made. Of course this brought in a couple of days the sure response:
"Anything, so you will be mine."

And Amy Belden's wits and powers of planning were all summoned into
requisition for the second time, to devise how this matter could be
arranged without subjecting the parties to the chance of detection. I
found the thing very difficult. In the first place, it was essential
that the marriage should come off within three days, Mr. Clavering
having, upon the receipt of her letter, secured his passage upon a
steamer that sailed o