‘Well, he _is_ old for such a girl, said Mrs. Mountford, candidly; ‘we must not be too hard upon her, Worth.’ ‘Old, ma’am! well, in one way he may be called old,’ said the confidential maid; ‘but I don’t call it half so bad when they’re that age as when they’re just betwixt and between, both old and young, as you may say. Forty or so, that _is_ a worry; but sixty-five you can do with. If I’ve told her that once I’ve told her fifty times; but she pays no attention. And when you think what a nice little bit of money he’s put away since he’s been here, and how respectable he is, and respected by the family; and that she has nothing, poor girl! and nobody but me to look to! I think, if Miss Anne were to speak a word to her, ma’am, perhaps it would make a difference. They think a deal more of what a young lady says, like themselves, so to speak, than an old person like me.’ CHAPTER XII. MISTRESS AND MAID. Anne had gone upstairs some time before. At this time of her life she liked to be alone, and there were many reasons why solitude should be dear to her. For one thing, those who have just begun to thread the flowery ways of early love have always a great deal to think of. It is an occupation in itself to retrace all that has been done and said, nay, even looked and thought, and to carry this dream of recollection on into the future, adding what shall be to what has been. A girl does not require any other business in life when she has this delightful maze awaiting her, turning her room into a _Vita nuova_, another life which she can enter at her pleasure, shutting impenetrable doors upon all vulgar sights and sounds. In addition to this, which needed no addition, she had something active and positive to occupy her. She had answered Cosmo’s letter, thanking him for his offer to deny himself, to be silent if she wished him to be silent. But Anne declared that she had no such wish. ‘Do not let us make a folly of our correspondence,’ she had written; ‘but neither must we deny ourselves this great happiness, dear Cosmo, for the sake of my father. I have told my father that in this point I cannot obey him. I should scorn myself now if I made believe to obey him by giving up such intercourse as we can have. He has not asked this, and I think it would not be honest to offer it. What he wanted was that we should part altogether, and this we are not going to do. Write to me then, not every day, nor even every week, to make it common, but when your heart is full, and it would be an injustice to keep it from me any longer. And so will I to you.’ The bargain, if somewhat highflown, was very like Anne, and on this footing the letters began. Anne very soon felt that her heart was always full, that there was constantly more to say than a sheet of paper could carry; but she held by her own rule, and only broke silence when she could not keep it any longer, which gave to her letters a character of intensity and delicate passion most rare