neither well nor happy this morning?" I
continued.

"No," she said, quickly and eagerly—" oh,
no, I never asked that."

"I will tell you without your asking," I went
on. "Miss Fairlie has received your letter."

She had been down on her knees for some little
time past, carefully removing the last weather-stains
left about the inscription, while we were
speaking together. The first sentence of the
words I had just addressed to her made her pause
in her occupation, and turn slowly, without rising
from her knees, so as to face me. The second
sentence literally petrified her. The cloth she
had been holding dropped from her hands; her
lips fell apart; all the little colour that there
was naturally in her face left it in an instant.

"How do you know?" she said, faintly.
"Who showed it to you?" The blood
rushed back into her face—rushed overwhelmingly,
as the sense rushed upon her mind that
her own words had betrayed her. She struck
her hands together in despair. "I never wrote
it," she gasped, affrightedly; "I know nothing
about it!"

"Yes," I said, "you wrote it, and you know
about it. It was wrong to send such a letter;
it was wrong to frighten Miss Fairlie. If you
had anything to say that it was right and
necessary for her to hear, you should have gone
yourself to Limmeridge House; you should
have spoken to the young lady with your own
lips."

She crouched down over the flat stone of the
grave, till her face was hidden on it; and made
no reply.

"Miss Fairlie will be as good and kind to you
as her mother was, if you mean well," I went on.
"Miss Fairlie will keep your secret, and not let
you come to any harm. Will you see her
tomorrow at the farm? Will you meet her in the
garden at Limmeridge House?"

"Oh, if I could die, and be hidden and at rest
with you!" Her lips murmured the words close
on the grave-stone; murmured them in tones of
passionate endearment, to the dead remains
beneath. "You know how I love your child, for
your sake! Oh, Mrs. Fairlie! Mrs. Fairlie! tell
me how to save her. Be my darling and my
mother once more, and tell me what to do for the
best!"

I heard her lips kissing the stone: I saw her
hands beating on it passionately. The sound
and the sight deeply affected me. I stooped
down, and took the poor helpless hands tenderly
in mine, and tried to soothe her.

It was useless. She snatched her hands from
me, and never moved her face from the stone.
Seeing the urgent necessity of quieting her at
any hazard and by any means, I appealed to the
only anxiety that she had appeared to feel, in
connexion with me and with my opinion of her
—the anxiety to convince me of her fitness to be
mistress of her own actions.

"Come, come," I said, gently. "Try to
compose yourself, or you will make me alter my
opinion of you. Don't let me think that the
person who put you in the Asylum, might have
had some excuse——"

The next words died away on my lips. The
instant I risked that chance reference to the
person who had put her in the Asylum, she
sprang up on her knees. A most extraordinary
and startling change passed over her. Her
face, at all ordinary times so touching to look at,
in its nervous sensitiveness, weakness, and
uncertainty, became suddenly darkened by an
expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear,
which communicated a wild, unnatural force to
every feature. Her eyes dilated in the dim
evening light, like the eyes of a wild animal.
She caught up the cloth that had fallen at her
side, as if it had been a living creature that she
could kill, and crushed it in both her hands with
such convulsive strength that the few drops of
moisture left in it trickled down on the stone
beneath her.

"Talk of something else," she said, whispering
through her teeth. " I shall lose myself if
you talk of that."

Every vestige of the gentler thoughts which
had filled her mind hardly a minute since, seemed
to be swept from it now. It was evident that
the impression left by Mrs. Fairlie's kindness
was not, as I had supposed, the only strong
impression on her memory. With the grateful
remembrance of her school-days at Limmeridge,
there existed the vindictive remembrance of the
wrong inflicted on her by her confinement in the
Asylum. Who had done that wrong? Could it
really be her mother?

It was hard to give up pursuing the inquiry
to that final point; but I forced myself to
abandon all idea of continuing it. Seeing her
as I saw her now, it would have been cruel to
think of anything but the necessity and the
humanity of restoring her composure.

"I will talk of nothing to distress you," I
said soothingly.

"You want something," she answered, sharply
and suspiciously. "Don't look at me, like that.
Speak to me; tell me what you want."

"I only want you to quiet yourself, and, when
you are calmer, to think over what I have said."

"Said?" She paused; twisted the cloth in
her hands, backwards and forwards; and
whispered to herself, "What is it he said?" She
turned again towards me, and shook her head
impatiently. "Why don't you help me?" she
asked, with angry suddenness.

"Yes, yes," I said; "I will help you; and
you will soon remember. I asked you to see
Miss Fairlie to-morrow, and to tell her the truth
about the letter."

"Ah! Miss Fairlie—Fairlie—Fairlie——"

The mere utterance of the loved, familiar
name seemed to quiet her. Her face softened
and grew like itself again.

"You need have no fear of Miss Fairlie," I
continued; "and no fear of getting into trouble
through the letter. She knows so much about
it already, that you will have no difficulty in
telling her all. There can be little necessity
for concealment where there is hardly anything