"I feel a good deal better, my dear, this afternoon," she said; "I think
I shall be able to go to the Dorcas meeting. The room gets so close
that I have avoided going of late, but I think I shall not feel it too
much to-day. I will just change, and put on my bonnet; you will not
mind staying at home while I am away, will you?" And so she went.

Anastasia sat in the window-seat of the lower room. The sash was open,
for the spring days were lengthening, and a soft, sweet air was moving
about sundown. She told herself that she was making a bodice; an open
workbox stood beside her, and there was spread around just such a medley
of patterns, linings, scissors, cotton-reels, and buttons as is required
for the proper and ceremonious carrying on of "work." But she was not
working. The bodice itself, the very cause and spring of all these
preparations, lay on her lap, and there, too, had fallen her hands. She
half sat, half lay back on the window-seat, roaming in fancy far away,
while she drank in the breath of the spring, and watched a little patch
of transparent yellow sky between the houses grow pinker and more
golden, as the sunset went on.

Then a man came down the street and mounted the steps in front of
Bellevue Lodge; but she did not see him, because he was walking in from
the country, and so did not pass her window. It was the door-bell that
first broke her dreams. She slid down from her perch, and hastened to
let her aunt in, for she had no doubt that it was Miss Joliffe who had
come back from the meeting. The opening of the front-door was not a
thing to be hurried through, for though there was little indeed in
Bellevue Lodge to attract burglars, and though if burglars came they
would surely select some approach other than the main entrance, yet Miss
Joliffe insisted that when she was from home the door should be secured
as if to stand a siege. So Anastasia drew the top bolt, and slipped the
chain, and unlocked the lock. There was a little difficulty with the
bottom bolt, and she had to cry out: "I am sorry for keeping you
waiting; this fastening _will_ stick." But it gave at last; she swung
the heavy door back, and found herself face to face with Lord Blandamer.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

They stood face to face, and looked at one another for a second. Anyone
seeing those two figures silhouetted against the yellow sunset sky might
have taken them for cousins, or even for brother and sister. They wer