She got up and looked at herself in a glass with an insight that does not come to happy women. The world had taught her that a woman with a clear skin and good teeth has it in her own hands to be beautiful, but it was something else that had taught her to build up her beauty as an architect builds a palace for a king. Her red-brown hair was but a little ruddier than in convent-days. She had been too wise to dye it; her round, young face was chiseled into the firmness of a delicate cameo by the sure hands of Love and vain longing; her brave mouth was more scornful, more self-reliant than of old, and the queer, veiled look was gone from her blue eyes. They were bold, under the lashes and brows she had learned to darken, and the head that had bowed so easily to rebuke was set proudly now. And yet there was little for Andria Erle to glory in. She turned sharply from the glass. “Bah! The child would not know me, nor I her,” she thought. “I wonder why I am thinking of her. Oh, I’m nervous--nervous! And I have no real cause, I can’t have any.” But the step with which she paced the room was not that of a woman at ease. She was sick with a terror that grew daily, and she knew it. She looked at the magnificence about her, not indifferently, as she had been wont to look, but like a woman who holds luxury by a frail tenure and fears to lose it. Yet the luxury of the place came last to her troubled mind. There was more than that to lose; love and trust, that might go any day. To keep her thoughts away from that she tried to remember the convent, but it only maddened her. “Oh, Mother Benedicta!” she said to herself. “You knew too little about the world when you sent me to a house like lady Parr’s. You and the good sisters would have thought that house hell on earth from the things that went on there. I might have, too, if I hadn’t been a blind fool. But I wouldn’t go back. I’ve been happy; I’ve had my day--and I’ve no reason to think it’s done yet. I know,” deliberately, “I’ve no reason!” and while she swore it to herself she kept listening for the postman’s knock. It seemed to thunder through the house before she knew it. But the servant who brought in the one letter that had come found his mistress sitting reading, her exquisite paled satin tea-gown in careful folds about her languid figure. Her heart knocked at her ribs as she took the letter; as the door closed behind the man she sprang to her feet, crushing the thin note to her breast. “Oh, thank God!” she breathed, “thank God. I knew it would come. I knew he didn’t mean to throw me over.” She kissed the senseless letter like a living thing. She knew each line of the address--every letter was dear to her; yet Beryl Corselas would not have known the name on the envelope, which certainly was not Andria Heathcote. To Mother Felicitas it might not have been so strange. It was not for five minutes that Andria opened the letter, and when she did so she no longer thanked God for it.