at Todd's Corner was near
Limmeridge--oh! I was so happy I would have walked all the way barefoot
to get there, and see the schools and the village and Limmeridge House
again. They are very good people at Todd's Corner. I hope I shall
stay there a long time. There is only one thing I don't like about
them, and don't like about Mrs. Clements----"

"What is it?"

"They will tease me about dressing all in white--they say it looks so
particular. How do they know? Mrs. Fairlie knew best. Mrs. Fairlie
would never have made me wear this ugly blue cloak! Ah! she was fond of
white in her lifetime, and here is white stone about her grave--and I
am making it whiter for her sake. She often wore white herself, and
she always dressed her little daughter in white. Is Miss Fairlie well
and happy? Does she wear white now, as she used when she was a girl?"

Her voice sank when she put the questions about Miss Fairlie, and she
turned her head farther and farther away from me. I thought I
detected, in the alteration of her manner, an uneasy consciousness of
the risk she had run in sending the anonymous letter, and I instantly
determined so to frame my answer as to surprise her into owning it.

"Miss Fairlie was not very well or very happy this morning," I said.

She murmured a few words, but they were spoken so confusedly, and in
such a low tone, that I could not even guess at what they meant.

"Did you ask me why Miss Fairlie was neither well nor happy this
morning?" I continued.

"No," she said quickly and eagerly--"oh no, I never asked that."

"I will tell you without your asking," I went on. "Miss Fairlie has
received your letter."

She had been down on her knees for some little time past, carefully
removing the last weather-stains left about the inscription while we
were speaking together. The first sentence of the words I had just
addressed to her made her pause in her occupation, and turn slowly
without rising from her knees, so as to face me. The second sentence
literally petrified her. The cloth she had been holding dropped from
her hands--her lips fell apart--all the little colour that there was
naturally in her face left it in an instant.

"How do you know?" she said faintly. "Who showed it to you?" The blood
rushed back into her face--rushed overwhelmingly, as the sense rushed
upon her mind that her own words had betrayed her. She struck her hands
together in despair. "I never wrote it," she gasped affr