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The letter moved Raye considerably when it reached him. The intelligence itself had affected him less than her unexpected manner of treating him in relation to it. The absence of any word of reproach, the devotion to hig interesta, the self-sacrifice apparent in every line, all made up a nobility of character that he had never dreamed of finding in womankind.

“God forgive me!” he said, tremulously. I have been a wicked wretch. I did not know she was such a treasure as this !”

He reassured her instantly; declaring that he would not of coarse desert her, that he would provide a home for her somewhere. Meanwhile she was to stay where she was as long as her mistress would allow her.

But a misfortune supervened in this direction. Whether an inkling of Anna’s circumstancea reached the knowledge of Mre, Harnham’s husband or not cannot be said, but the girl was compelied, in spite of Edith’s entreaties, to leave the house. By her own choice she decided to go back for a while to the cottage on the Plain, This arrangement led to a consultation as to how the correspondence should be carried on; and in the girl’s inability to continue personally what had been begun in her name, and in the difficulty of their acting in concert as heretofore, she requested Mrs. Harnham—the only well-to-do friend she had in the world—to receive the letters and reply to them off-hand, sending them on afterwards to herself on the Plain, where she might at least get some neighbor to read them to her, though disqualified from replying for her because of the hand. Anna and her box then departed for the Plain.