She talked of him daily to her father, and was constant in her prayer that they should not be made to quarrel. Having so long doubted whether she could ever love him, she now could not understand the strength of her own feeling. "Papa, mightn't I write to him," she said. But her father thought that she should not herself take the first step at any rate till the Marquis was gone. It was she who had in fact been injured, and the overture should come from the other side. Then at last, in a low whisper, hiding her face, she told her father a great secret,--adding with a voice a little raised, "Now, papa, I must write to him." "My darling, my dearest," said the Dean, leaning over and kissing her with more than his usual demonstration of love. "I may write now." "Yes, dear, you should certainly tell him that." Then the Dean went out and walked round the deanery garden, and the cathedral cloisters, and the close, assuring himself that after a very little while the real Lord Popenjoy would be his own grandson. CHAPTER XLV. LADY GEORGE AT THE DEANERY. It took Mary a long long morning,--not altogether an unhappy morning,--to write her letter to her husband. She was forced to make many attempts before she could tell the great news in a fitting way, and even when the telling was done she was very far from being satisfied with the manner of it. There should have been no necessity that such tidings should be told by letter. It was cruel, very cruel, that such a moment should not have been made happy to her by his joy. The whisper made to her father should have been made to him,--but that things had gone so untowardly with her. And then, in her present circumstances, she could not devote her letter to the one event. She must refer to the said subject of their separation. "Dear, dearest George, pray do not think of quarrelling with me," she said twice over in her letter. The letter did get itself finished at last, and the groom was sent over with it on horseback.