She valued Sidney Hinchford at his just due at last; she understood his patience, energy, and love; how he had been working for her from his boyhood, and what would have been the effect to him of losing her. She had made up her mind, when he returned, to give him all her heart, and sustain him by her love against those secret cares which lately had been shadowing him. She believed that her secret was for ever shut away from the light--that keeping it under lock and key would be better for Sidney, whose trust in her was so implicit. He had always believed in her devotion to himself; why should she break in upon that dream, now she felt that all girlish follies were over with her, and she had become a staid woman, whose hope was to be his wife? She was consoled by Mattie's letter: "It is not only for my actions of that night that I have gone away. Sooner or later it must have come." Mattie, ever a deep thinker, considered it best also--by her confession, even Mattie would be unhappy; so Harriet kept her secret for everybody's sake, and made her last mistake in life. Mattie and she had both regarded the subject from a narrow point of view, and were wrong; the best intentioned people are wrong sometimes, and from young women, with their heads disturbed concerning young men, we do not anticipate the judgment of Solomon. Harriet Wesden felt secure--knowing not of the letter in Mr. Hinchford's coat, of Mr. Hinchford's mistake and Mattie's. And yet the chances now were against the revelation, thanks to the treacherous memory of the old gentleman. He had mentioned his error in the counting-house to his employers the same day, and met with a reprimand and a supercilious shrug of the shoulders--"It was like old Hinchford," one partner had muttered to another, and there the subject ended for a while. Mr. Hinchford went home, resolving to restore the letter to Harriet Wesden, took the letter from his pocket and put it on the bedroom mantel-piece, to keep the matter in his remembrance until he saw Harriet again. There for two days the letter remained, till Ann Packet, in dusting the room, knocked it on the floor, picked it up and placed it on the dressing-glass, where Mr. Hinchford found it, and rather absently-shut it in the looking-glass drawer, as a safe place; and then the letter passed completely out of recollection, there being a great deal to trouble his mind just then. For they were not kind to him at his business, expected too much from him, and made no allowance for an old servant; and above all, and before all, the boy's birthday was drawing near--it was three days before Harriet Wesden's--and there was no sign of Sidney Hinchford on his way towards him.