“To be sure, you shall hear of me from time to time, through Robin and Joan Cockscroft. I will not grieve you by saying, 'Be true to me,' my noble one, and my everlasting love.” Mary was comforted, and ceased to cry. She was proud of him thus in the depth of his trouble; and she prayed to God to bless him through the long sad time. CHAPTER XXXVII FACT, OR FACTOR “Papa, I have brought you a wonderful letter,” cried Miss Janetta Upround, toward supper-time of that same night; “and the most miraculous thing about it is that there is no post to pay. Oh, how stupid I am! I ought to have got at least a shilling out of you for postage.” “My dear, be sorry for your sins, and not for having failed to add to them. Our little world is brimful of news just now, but nearly all of it bad news. Why, bless me, this is in regular print, and it never has passed through the post at all, which explains the most astounding fact of positively naught to pay. Janetta, every day I congratulate myself upon such a wondrous daughter. But I never could have hoped that even you would bring me a letter gratis.” “But the worst of it is that I deserve no credit. If I had cheated the postman, there would have been something to be proud of. But this letter came in the most ignominious way--poked under the gate, papa! It is sealed with a foreign coin! Oh, dear, dear, I am all in a tingle to know all about it. I saw it by the moonlight, and it must belong to me.” “My dear, it says, 'Private, and to his own hands.' Therefore you had better go, and think no more about it. I confide to you many of my business matters: or at any rate you get them out of me: but this being private, you must think no more about it.” “Darling papa, what a flagrant shame! The man must have done it with no other object than to rob me of every wink of sleep. If I swallow the outrage and retire, will you promise to tell me every word to-morrow? You preached a most exquisite sermon last Sunday about the meanness and futility of small concealments.” “Be off!” cried the rector; “you are worse than Mr. Mordacks, who lays down the law about frankness perpetually, but never lets me guess what his own purpose is.” “Oh, now I see where the infection comes from! Papa, I am off, for fear of catching it myself. Don't tell me, whatever you do. I never can sleep upon dark mysteries.”