of Alden Lytton, had not appeared since
he had called on her on his first visit to Charlottesville.

But he wrote to her six times a week, and she knew what he was doing--he
was trying hard to settle up his business at Wendover, with the distant
hope of removing to Charlottesville and opening a store there.

CHAPTER XIV.

IN THE TOILS.

Affairs went on in this way for one year longer. Emma Cavendish
continued to write regularly to Mrs. Grey, telling her all the little
household and neighborhood news. Among the rest, she told her how Mrs.
Fanning, by her gentleness and patience, was winning the affections of
all her household, and especially of Madam Cavendish, who had been most
of all prejudiced against her; and how much the invalid's health was
improving.

"She will never be perfectly well again; but I think, with proper care,
and under Divine Providence, we may succeed in preserving her life for
many years longer."

Now, as Mary Grey could not venture to return to Blue Cliffs, or even to
write a letter to that place with her own hand, so long as Mrs. Fanning
should live in the house, the prospect of her doing either grew more and
more remote.

She could not plead her sprained finger forever as an excuse for not
writing; so one day she put on a very tight glove and buttoned it over
her wrist, and then took a harder steel pen than she had ever used
before, and she sat down and wrote a few lines by way of experiment. It
was perfectly successful. Between the tight-fitting glove and the hard
steel pen her handwriting was so disguised that she herself would never
have known it, nor could any expert ever have detected it. So there was
no possible danger of any one at Blue Cliffs recognizing it as hers.

Then, with this tightly-gloved hand and this hard steel pen, she sat
down and wrote a letter to Emma Cavendish, saying that she could no
longer deny herself the pleasure of writing to her darling, though her
finger was still so stiff that she wrote with great difficulty, as might
be seen in the cramped and awkward letters, "all looking as if they had
epileptic fits," she jestingly added.

When Miss Cavendish replied to this letter she said that indeed Mrs.
Grey's hand must have been very severely sprained, and that she herself
would never have known the writing.

After this all Mrs. Grey's letters to Miss Cavendish were written by a
hand buttoned up in a tight glove, and with a hard steel pen, and
contin