princesses. My bedroom, where I am writing, is in a
turret; quaintly furnished, with tapestry on the wall which might have
suggested to Browning his "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came."

It's very late, but I don't like to go to bed, partly because I can't
keep jumping up and down to look out of my window at wild crags and
moonlit sea when I'm asleep; partly because I have such silly, miserable
dreams about Sir Lionel hating me, that I wake up snivelling; and to
write to you when I'm a tiny bit _triste_ is always like warming my
hands at a rainbow-tinted fire of ship's logs.

To-morrow afternoon we are going back to Newcastle, where we will "lie"
one night, as old books say, and then make a very _matinal_ start to do
our great day in Yorkshire, passing first through Durham, with just a
glance at the great cathedral. Once upon a time we would have given more
than a glance. But, as I told you, Sir Lionel seems to have lost heart
for the "long trail."

I never saw him so interested in Mrs. Senter as he has appeared to be
these last two nights at Cragside and here. Certainly she is looking her
very, very best; and in her manner with him there is a gentleness and
womanliness only just developed. One would fancy that a sympathetic
understanding had established itself between them, as it might if she
told him some piteous story about herself which roused all his chivalry.

Well, if she has told him any such story, I'm sure it is a "story" in
every sense of the word. And I don't know how I should bear it if she
cajoled him into believing her an injured innocent who needed the
shelter of a (rich and titled) man's arm.

Perhaps it is a little sad wind that cries at my window like a baby
begging to come in; perhaps it is just foolishness; but I have a
presentiment that something will happen here to make me remember
Bamborough Castle forever, not for itself alone.

_Afternoon of next day_

It _has_ happened. Best One, I don't quite know what is going to become
of me. There has been the most awful row. It was with Dick, and Sir
Lionel doesn't know about it yet, and we are supposed to be going away
in a few minutes; but maybe Dick is talking to Sir Lionel now, and if he
is, I don't suppose I shall be allowed to proceed in the company of
virtuous Emily and (comparatively) innocent Gwendolen. I shall probably
be given a third-class ticket back to Paris, and ordered to "git."

It's rather hard that, having sacrificed so mu