on a family where he was not appreciated, and too high a sense of honour to accept her well-meant proposal for a clandestine engagement.
When understanding came, she broke into floods of weeping; then dried her tears, and sought excuses for his seeming coldness. She found them in his pride; it was naturally up in arms, after the rebuff it had received. If he had addressed her merely as "My dear Agnes," it was because he thought it probable Mrs. Le Messurier would see the letter; but he had signed himself "Yours, nevertheless." This was intended to show her he loved her still. Before evening, the very cause of her morning's anguish was converted into another proof of the nobility of her lover's mind.
By the end of twenty-four hours she had persuaded herself she ought to write to him again, to reproach him gently, tenderly for his attitude towards her, to assure him of her unalterable constancy, to implore him too, to be true. It was written on a Sunday, and she carried the letter to evening chapel with her, inside the bosom of her frock, both to sanctify it as it were, and to have the pleasure of feeling it against her heart as long as possible. Happy letter! by to-morrow morning it was to have the joy, the glory, of lying in his hand. Her grandmother never went to chapel a second time, and Freddy made no objection to passing round by the letter-box on the way home.
There was a day of long suspense, but when Agnes came down to breakfast on Tuesday morning, purposely earlier than the others, she found his answer lying on her plate.
With her heart beating violently, she took it up, studied every line, every dot of the superscription, noticed that the stamp had been put on crookedly, that the flap of the envelope went down into a long point. She turned it over and over in her hand, filledwith
