it had been posted; and hoped that if she
once escaped from the room, the matter would drop out of memory. Miss
Joliffe fired a parting shot to try to bring her niece to her bearings
as she was going out:

"I do not know, my dear, that I should encourage any correspondence from
Mr Westray, if I were you. It would be more seemly, perhaps, that he
should write to me on any little matter of business than to you." But
Anastasia feigned not to hear her, and held on her course.

She betook herself to the room that had once been Mr Sharnall's, but
was now distressingly empty and forlorn, and there finding writing
materials, sat down to compose an answer to Westray's letter. She knew
its contents thoroughly well, she knew its expressions almost by heart,
yet she spread it out on the table before her, and read and re-read it
as many times as if it were the most difficult of cryptograms.

"Dearest Anastasia," it began, and she found a grievance in the very
first word, "Dearest." What right had he to call her "Dearest"? She
was one of those unintelligible females who do not shower superlatives
on every chance acquaintance. She must, no doubt, have been callous as
judged by modern standards, or at least, singularly unimaginative, for
among her few correspondents she had not one whom she addressed as
"dearest." No, not even her aunt, for at such rare times of absence
from home as she had occasion to write to Miss Joliffe, "My dear Aunt
Euphemia" was the invocation.

It was curious that this same word "Dearest" had occasioned Westray also
considerable thought and dubiety. Should he call her "Dearest
Anastasia," or "Dear Miss Joliffe"? The first sounded too forward, the
second too formal. He had discussed this and other details with his
mother, and the die had at last fallen on "Dearest." At the worst such
an address could only be criticised as proleptic, since it must be
justified almost immediately by Anastasia's acceptance of his proposal.

"Dearest Anastasia--for dearest you are and ever will be to me--I feel
sure that your heart will go out to meet my heart in what I am saying;
that your kindness will support me in the important step which has now
to be taken."

Anastasia shook her head, though there was no one to see her. There was
a suggestion of fate overbearing prudence in Westray's words, a
suggestion that he needed sympathy in an unpleasant predicament, that
jarred on her intolerably.

"I have