a singular coincidence!" said Mrs Dale.

"I won't tell you a word more about his letter," said Lily. So she
folded it up, and put it in her pocket. But as soon as she found
herself alone in her own room, she had it out again, and read it over
some half-a-dozen times.

That was the occupation of her morning,--that, and the manufacture
of some very intricate piece of work which was intended for the
adornment of Mr Crosbie's person. Her hands, however, were very full
of work;--or, rather, she intended that they should be full. She
would take with her to her new home, when she was married, all manner
of household gear, the produce of her own industry and economy. She
had declared that she wanted to do something for her future husband,
and she would begin that something at once. And in this matter she
did not belie her promises to herself, or allow her good intentions
to evaporate unaccomplished. She soon surrounded herself with harder
tasks than those embroidered slippers with which she indulged herself
immediately after his departure. And Mrs Dale and Bell, though in
their gentle way they laughed at her,--nevertheless they worked with
her, sitting sternly to their long tasks, in order that Crosbie's
house might not be empty when their darling should go to take her
place there as his wife.

But it was absolutely necessary that the letter should be answered.
It would in her eyes have been a great sin to have let that day's
post go without carrying a letter from her to Courcy Castle,--a sin
of which she felt no temptation to be guilty. It was an exquisite
pleasure to her to seat herself at her little table, with her neat
desk and small appurtenances for epistle-craft, and to feel that she
had a letter to write in which she had truly much to say. Hitherto
her correspondence had been uninteresting and almost weak in its
nature. From her mother and sister she had hardly been yet parted;
and though she had other friends, she had seldom found herself with
very much to tell them by post. What could she communicate to Mary
Eames at Guestwick, which should be in itself exciting as she wrote
it? When she wrote to John Eames, and told "Dear John" that mamma
hoped to have the pleasure of seeing him to tea at such an hour, the
work of writing was of little moment to her, though the note when
written became one of the choicest treasures of him to whom it was
addressed.

But now the matter was very different. When she saw the words