tely on his going she had told her
sister that he would certainly come again, but had said at the same
time that his coming could be of no use. He was so poor a man; and
she,--though poorer than he,--had been so little accustomed to
poverty of life, that she had then acknowledged to herself that she
was not fit to be his wife. Gradually, as the slow weeks went by her,
there had come a change in her ideas. She now thought that he never
would come again; but that if he did she would confess to him that
her own views about life were changed. "I would tell him frankly
that I could eat a crust with him in any garret in London." But this
was said to herself;--never to her sister. Emily and Mrs. Outhouse
had determined together that it would be wise to abstain from all
mention of Hugh Stanbury's name. Nora had felt that her sister had so
abstained, and this reticence had assisted in producing the despair
which had come upon her. Hugh, when he had left her, had certainly
given her encouragement to expect that he would return. She had been
sure then that he would return. She had been sure of it, though she
had told him that it would be useless. But now, when these sad weeks
had slowly crept over her head, when during the long hours of the
long days she had thought of him continually,--telling herself that
it was impossible that she should ever become the wife of any man if
she did not become his,--she assured herself that she had seen and
heard the last of him. She must surely have forgotten his hot words
and that daring embrace.

Then there came a letter to her. The question of the management of
letters for young ladies is handled very differently in different
houses. In some establishments the post is as free to young ladies
as it is to the reverend seniors of the household. In others it is
considered to be quite a matter of course that some experienced
discretion should sit in judgment on the correspondence of the
daughters of the family. When Nora Rowley was living with her sister
in Curzon Street, she would have been very indignant indeed had it
been suggested to her that there was any authority over her letters
vested in her sister. But now, circumstanced as she was at St.
Diddulph's, she did understand that no letter would reach her
without her aunt knowing that it had come. All this was distasteful
to her,--as were indeed all the details of her life at St.
Diddulph's;--but she could not help herself. Had her aunt told h