He would certainly despise her; and it was not nice to contemplate the kindly glance of those eyes turned to scorn and contempt. Although she knew it was absurd to suppose that Lady Cicely's cousin could ever be aware of, or interested in, the doings of so insignificant a person as herself, she shrank oddly from doing anything of which he would disapprove. "To arrange to meet a strange man isn't really a very womanly thing to do," she said, when she sat down to write her letter to the unknown Mr. Mernside. "I shouldn't ever have answered the advertisement at all, if I had not been so dreadfully poor, and I shouldn't like to look Lady Cicely's cousin in the face again if I met this man." The letter was not so difficult a one to write as the first had been, and its recipient both smiled and sighed, as he read the terse little sentences in the round, girlish handwriting. "DEAR SIR,-- "Thank you for your kind letter, but I hope I now have a chance of getting some work, so that I need not trouble you any more. "Yours faithfully, "C. MOORE." "Well! that's a relief," Rupert ejaculated, throwing the note into the fire; "what I could have done with the girl if she had agreed to meet me, heaven only knows. Margaret would have helped me--but Margaret----" His meditations ended abruptly; he drew from his breast pocket a letter that had reached him a post or two before Christina's arrived, and for the fiftieth time read it from end to end. The sense of it had long since imprinted itself upon his brain, but it gave him a painful pleasure to let his eyes rest upon the well-formed letters of the handwriting, though a resentful indignation towards the writer stirred within him. She had not treated him well, and yet--she was the one woman in the world to him--this woman of the dark eyes and rare white beauty, who signed her letter with the one word, "Margaret." No address stood at the head of the letter, it was undated; and the postmark was that of the West Central district. "Forgive me for having left London so abruptly, and without telling you of my intention," she wrote. "I was summoned away by telegram, and in my hurry and anxiety, I forgot to let you know. I cannot tell you my address just now, but Elizabeth is with me, and I am safe and well. I have often warned you, have I not, my dear, faithful friend, that much in my life must always seem to you strange and mysterious. I can give you no explanation now. But trust me still. MARGARET. "Letters sent to me, c/o Mrs. Milton, 180, Gower Street, will be forwarded." Mernside wrote four letters, each one of which in turn he tore up and flung into the fire as soon as it was written, finally writing a fifth, which appeared to satisfy him, for, having addressed and stamped it, he put it into his pocket when he went out.