er
that she should never be allowed to receive a letter at all, she must
have submitted till her mother had come to her relief. The letter
which reached her now was put into her hands by her sister, but it
had been given to Mrs. Trevelyan by Mrs. Outhouse. "Nora," said
Mrs. Trevelyan, "here is a letter for you. I think it is from Mr.
Stanbury."

"Give it me," said Nora greedily.

"Of course I will give it you. But I hope you do not intend to
correspond with him."

"If he has written to me I shall answer him of course," said Nora,
holding her treasure.

"Aunt Mary thinks that you should not do so till papa and mamma have
arrived."

"If Aunt Mary is afraid of me let her tell me so, and I will contrive
to go somewhere else." Poor Nora knew that this threat was futile.
There was no house to which she could take herself.

"She is not afraid of you at all, Nora. She only says that she thinks
you should not write to Mr. Stanbury." Then Nora escaped to the cold
but solitary seclusion of her bed-room and there she read her letter.

The reader may remember that Hugh Stanbury when he last left St.
Diddulph's had not been oppressed by any of the gloomy reveries of a
despairing lover. He had spoken his mind freely to Nora, and had felt
himself justified in believing that he had not spoken in vain. He had
had her in his arms, and she had found it impossible to say that she
did not love him. But then she had been quite firm in her purpose to
give him no encouragement that she could avoid. She had said no word
that would justify him in considering that there was any engagement
between them; and, moreover, he had been warned not to come to the
house by its mistress. From day to day he thought of it all, now
telling himself that there was nothing to be done but to trust in
her fidelity till he should be in a position to offer her a fitting
home, and then reflecting that he could not expect such a girl as
Nora Rowley to wait for him, unless he could succeed in making her
understand that he at any rate intended to wait for her. On one day
he would think that good faith and proper consideration for Nora
herself required him to keep silent; on the next he would tell
himself that such maudlin chivalry as he was proposing to himself was
sure to go to the wall and be neither rewarded nor recognised. So at
last he sat down and wrote the following letter:--

Lincoln's Inn Fields, January, 186--.

DEAREST NORA,

Ever sinc