--don't
think there is any change in my heart toward you--believe only that I
am a very unhappy woman, and that I am in a position which forces me,
against my own will, to be silent about myself. Silent even to you, the
sister of my love--the one person in the world who is dearest to me!
A time may come when I shall be able to open my heart to you. Oh, what
good it will do me! what a relief it will be! For the present, I must be
silent. For the present, we must be parted. God knows what it costs me
to write this. I think of the dear old days that are gone; I remember
how I promised your mother to be a sister to you, when her kind eyes
looked at me, for the last time--_your_ mother, who was an angel from
heaven to _mine!_ All this comes back on me now, and breaks my heart.
But it must be! my own Blanche, for the present, it must be! I will
write often--I will think of you, my darling, night and day, till a
happier future unites us again. God bless _you,_ my dear one! And God
help _me!_"

Blanche silently crossed the room to the sofa on which Anne was sitting,
and stood there for a moment, looking at her. She sat down, and laid
her head on Anne's shoulder. Sorrowfully and quietly, she put the letter
into her bosom--and took Anne's hand, and kissed it.

"All my questions are answered, dear. I will wait your time."

It was simply, sweetly, generously said.

Anne burst into tears.

* * * * *

The rain still fell, but the storm was dying away.

Blanche left the sofa, and, going to the window, opened the shutters to
look out at the night. She suddenly came back to Anne.

"I see lights," she said--"the lights of a carriage coming up out of
the darkness of the moor. They are sending after me, from Windygates. Go
into t he bedroom. It's just possible Lady Lundie may have come for me
herself."

The ordinary relations of the two toward each other were completely
reversed. Anne was like a child in Blanche's hands. She rose, and
withdrew.

Left alone, Blanche took the letter out of her bosom, and read it again,
in the interval of waiting for the carriage.

The second reading confirmed her in a resolution which she had privately
taken, while she had been sitting by Anne on the sofa--a resolution
destined to lead to far more serious results in the future than any
previsions of hers could anticipate. Sir Patrick was the one person she
knew on whose discretion and experience she could implicitly rely.
She determined, in An