hat is it?" she asked eagerly.

"The misfortune of believing too innocently in her own virtue, and in
the faith and honour of the man she loves," I answered.

She looked up at me with the artless bewilderment of a child. Not the
slightest confusion or change of colour--not the faintest trace of any
secret consciousness of shame struggling to the surface appeared in her
face--that face which betrayed every other emotion with such
transparent clearness. No words that ever were spoken could have
assured me, as her look and manner now assured me, that the motive
which I had assigned for her writing the letter and sending it to Miss
Fairlie was plainly and distinctly the wrong one. That doubt, at any
rate, was now set at rest; but the very removal of it opened a new
prospect of uncertainty. The letter, as I knew from positive
testimony, pointed at Sir Percival Glyde, though it did not name him.
She must have had some strong motive, originating in some deep sense of
injury, for secretly denouncing him to Miss Fairlie in such terms as
she had employed, and that motive was unquestionably not to be traced
to the loss of her innocence and her character. Whatever wrong he
might have inflicted on her was not of that nature. Of what nature
could it be?

"I don't understand you," she said, after evidently trying hard, and
trying in vain, to discover the meaning of the words I had last said to
her.

"Never mind," I answered. "Let us go on with what we were talking
about. Tell me how long you stayed with Mrs. Clements in London, and
how you came here."

"How long?" she repeated. "I stayed with Mrs. Clements till we both
came to this place, two days ago."

"You are living in the village, then?" I said. "It is strange I should
not have heard of you, though you have only been here two days."

"No, no, not in the village. Three miles away at a farm. Do you know
the farm? They call it Todd's Corner."

I remembered the place perfectly--we had often passed by it in our
drives. It was one of the oldest farms in the neighbourhood, situated
in a solitary, sheltered spot, inland at the junction of two hills.

"They are relations of Mrs. Clements at Todd's Corner," she went on,
"and they had often asked her to go and see them. She said she would
go, and take me with her, for the quiet and the fresh air. It was very
kind, was it not? I would have gone anywhere to be quiet, and safe, and
out of the way. But when I heard th