‘Well, then, do it yourself. What can it matter if you break it to-day or in two years and a half? Papa never could mean that you were to keep it there and look at it, and never open it for two years and a half.’ All this time Rose turned over and over the little packet with its three red seals, playing with it as a cat plays with a mouse. ‘Perhaps it changes everything,’ she said; ‘perhaps there is a new will here without me having to make it. Why should we all be kept in such suspense, not knowing anything, and poor Mr. Douglas made so unhappy?’ ‘Did Mr. Douglas tell you that he was unhappy?’ said Anne, humouring her tormentor, while she kept her eyes upon the letter. ‘Dear Rose, put it back again: here is the place for it. I have a great deal to do and to think of. Don’t worry me, dear, any more.’ Then Rose put it back, but with reluctance. ‘If it were addressed to me I should open it at once,’ she said. ‘It is far more important now than it will be after. Mr. Douglas did not tell me he was unhappy, but he let mamma guess it, which was much the same. Anne, if I were you, I would break the engagement; I would set him free. It must be dreadful to hold anyone like that bound up for life. And when you think--if nothing turns up, if this is to be the end, if you never have money enough to marry, why shouldn’t you do it now, and give yourselves, both of you, another chance?’ Anne rose up from her papers, thrusting them into the despatch-box pell-mell in the confusion of her thoughts. The little calm matter-of-fact voice which sounded so steadily, trilling on like a large cricket--was it speaking the truth? was this, perhaps, what it would have to come to? Her hands trembled as she shut the box hastily; her limbs shook under her. But Rose was no way disturbed. ‘You would be sure to get someone else with more money,’ she said serenely, ‘and so would he.’ CHAPTER XXVI. GOING AWAY.