rst letter was a triumph of equivocal diplomacy. She did not
utter a single verbal falsehood, and without such contrived to blindfold
every one. Her feelings towards her affianced husband had changed of
late--("of late" is an elastic term)--she had "learnt to value the
lifelong devotion of her dear Val,"--(when learned was again left to the
imagination)--and "seeing no course left but to break with Paul before
it was too late," she had fled to avoid a scene which would have only
given him pain, and not altered her resolution.

"Had you any sort of premonition of this, Paul?" Sue inquired in
tremulous accents, an hour having elapsed since the letter came.

"She put one or two rather strange questions to me yesterday;" hesitated
he.

"Might I ask--could you tell me what they were?"

"I think I would rather not. It can do no good now." He spoke gently,
but she could not press the point.

"She knows;" said Paul, to himself. "How she knows I cannot fathom; but
all this about the change in her feelings is only a blind. _She knows_;
and though she has given me my release, I can never avail myself of it."

He left the Abbey within the hour.

* * * * *

And this was now a story three months old, and Maud was coming to say
"Good-bye" before beginning a new life in another land.

Heretofore she had obstinately rejected the olive branch held out by
Sue. Sue, acting as mouthpiece for the three, had written time and
again, begging that for all their sakes no estrangement should take
place; entreating the delinquents to believe that they would only meet
with kindness and affection in Eaton Place, where the sisters were
established, and where room was plentiful. Would not Val and Maud come
and make their home also there for the present?

But though the offer, delicately worded, might have been presumed
tempting enough to two almost penniless people, it was coldly declined.

"And she seems as if _she_ were angry with _us_!" cried Sybil, "she who
dragged the whole family through the mud, and left us to bear the
brunt!"

"Certainly she does write as if she bore us a grudge," owned Sue, "and
yet, how can she? What have we done? What has any one of us done that
Maud should refuse to be one with us again? I am sorry, but of course if
that is the spirit in which poor Maud receives overtures of peace, I
really--really I do not think I can go on thrusting them upon her." For
Sue also had her pride, t