ect--whichever you like best.'

Emily made a last desperate effort. She wrung her handkerchief hard in
her lap, and let off the name as if she had been letting off a loaded
gun:--'Lord Montbarry!'

Agnes rose and looked at her.

'You have disappointed me,' she said very quietly, but with a look
which the courier's wife had never seen in her face before. 'Knowing
what you know, you ought to be aware that it is impossible for me to
communicate with Lord Montbarry. I always supposed you had some
delicacy of feeling. I am sorry to find that I have been mistaken.'

Weak as she was, Emily had spirit enough to feel the reproof. She
walked in her meek noiseless way to the door. 'I beg your pardon,
Miss. I am not quite so bad as you think me. But I beg your pardon,
all the same.'

She opened the door. Agnes called her back. There was something in
the woman's apology that appealed irresistibly to her just and generous
nature. 'Come,' she said; 'we must not part in this way. Let me not
misunderstand you. What is it that you expected me to do?'

Emily was wise enough to answer this time without any reserve. 'My
husband will send his testimonials, Miss, to Lord Montbarry in
Scotland. I only wanted you to let him say in his letter that his wife
has been known to you since she was a child, and that you feel some
little interest in his welfare on that account. I don't ask it now,
Miss. You have made me understand that I was wrong.'

Had she really been wrong? Past remembrances, as well as present
troubles, pleaded powerfully with Agnes for the courier's wife. 'It
seems only a small favour to ask,' she said, speaking under the impulse
of kindness which was the strongest impulse in her nature. 'But I am
not sure that I ought to allow my name to be mentioned in your
husband's letter. Let me hear again exactly what he wishes to say.'
Emily repeated the words--and then offered one of those suggestions,
which have a special value of their own to persons unaccustomed to the
use of their pens. 'Suppose you try, Miss, how it looks in writing?'
Childish as the idea was, Agnes tried the experiment. 'If I let you
mention me,' she said, 'we must at least decide what you are to say.'
She wrote the words in the briefest and plainest form:--'I venture to
state that my wife has been known from her childhood to Miss Agnes
Lockwood, who feels some little interest in my welfare on that
account.' Reduced to this one sentence, there was surely nothi