Send me one line before we meet to say Yes or No, and I
will write to Shanklin by the next post.

"Always yours affectionately,

"HARRIET GARTH"

The letter dropped from Magdalen's hand. Thoughts which had never risen
in her mind yet rose in it now.

Norah, whose courage under undeserved calamity had been the courage of
resignation--Norah, who had patiently accepted her hard lot; who from
first to last had meditated no vengeance and stooped to no deceit--Norah
had reached the end which all her sister's ingenuity, all her sister's
resolution, and all her sister's daring had failed to achieve. Openly
and honorably, with love on one side and love on the other, Norah had
married the man who possessed the Combe-Raven money--and Magdalen's own
scheme to recover it had opened the way to the event which had brought
husband and wife together.

As the light of that overwhelming discovery broke on her mind, the old
strife was renewed; and Good and Evil struggled once more which should
win her--but with added forces this time; with the new spirit that had
been breathed into her new life; with the nobler sense that had grown
with the growth of her gratitude to the man who had saved her, fighting
on the better side. All the higher impulses of her nature, which had
never, from first to last, let her err with impunity--which had tortured
her, before her marriage and after it, with the remorse that no woman
inherently heartless and inherently wicked can feel--all the nobler
elements in her character, gathered their forces for the crowning
struggle and strengthened her to meet, with no unworthy shrinking, the
revelation that had opened on her view. Clearer and clearer, in the
light of its own immortal life, the truth rose before her from the
ashes of her dead passions, from the grave of her buried hopes. When she
looked at the letter again--when she read the words once more which told
her that the recovery of the lost fortune was her sister's triumph, not
hers, she had victoriously trampled down all little jealousies and
all mean regrets; she could say in he r hearts of hearts, "Norah has
deserved it!"

The day wore on. She sat absorbed in her own thoughts, and heedless of
the second letter which she had not opened yet, until Kirke's return.

He stopped on the landing outside, and, opening the door a little way
only, asked, without entering the room, if she wanted anything that he
could send her. She begged him to come in. His