“I met Cooke, who was here at the Piccadilly when you were, as I was walking along the Strand a day or two ago. He is at the Regency now, and the papers have cracked him up so in the part he is playing that I wonder he condescended to talk to poor little me. He asked how we were getting on at the Piccadilly, and I mentioned that you had been in the country, but were coming back to London. He seemed very much interested in you, which amused me, remembering as I did how much you always disliked him, and how you used to mimic him for my amusement in the dressing-room; however, I did not take him down by telling him that. Do you remember how I used to stick up for him when you said he was fast? Well, you were right, for they say the way he is carrying on with some woman who has been acting in the country with him--West, I think her name is--is something disgraceful, considering that he is engaged or half engaged to that little fair girl who made such a hit in ‘Ophelia’ last year. He is trying to get this West into the Regency, I believe.” This was the passage which had arrested Annie’s attention, which she read through again and again with dry eyes, but with a bitter feeling of disappointment and shame. Then she let the letter drop from her fingers, and leaning against the flag-staff which rose from the top of the tower, she burst into heartfelt sobbing. She had cheated herself into believing that it was nothing but her ambition which impelled her in her eagerness to go to London; but now in the revulsion of feeling which suddenly made the thought of returning to town and her profession unutterably hateful to her, she saw with unmistakable clearness what the other and stronger motive had been which had made her enforced idleness at the Grange so hard to bear. She was still sobbing when she heard sounds behind her, and, looking round, saw her husband’s head as he came slowly to the top of the stairs. “What is the matter, Annie dear?” he asked anxiously. “Harry, what made you come up all those steps? It is too tiring for you,” said she, bending her head awkwardly to hide her tears. “I saw you from the avenue, and I saw you were crying,” he answered, as he mounted the last step and rested his hands on the low wall for support--he was not strong enough for much exertion yet. “What were you crying about, Annie? Not because you are going away, I know.” She had turned away to wipe the tears from her face, and, as she turned again toward him, she caught sight of her letter lying on the ground between them. He saw it at the same moment, and, although she had the presence of mind to pick it up very composedly, he at once came to the conclusion that in it lay the cause of her distress. “Who is that letter from?” “From Miss Taylor, who has been writing to me about the apartments I am going to have in town,” she said, as she put it into the pocket of her mantle. “Let me see it.”