“_This is what I shall want to be always telling you, what I shall tell you in my heart daily and hourly till I have you there in real presence, my Lucy_,” the deceiver wrote; and then, with a twist of his hand, in a changed writing even, “But I should not have dared to write but for a strange fact I found out after I left you--ARTHUR’S WIFE IS IN OAKLEY. It seems incredible, but it is true. I saw her on the road. She disappeared at the sight of me by a back-lane, and must have gone into some house. You will tell them or not, as you please; but I must tell _you_. There seems, I can’t quite tell how, hope for ourselves in it. My darling!” And then the other kind of writing began again, with which we sober-minded persons have nothing to do. Lucy, it may be supposed, was extremely excited by this communication; not just at first, it must be allowed, not till she had read it about six times over did the real point of it strike her mind. At first it was the other part of the letter that occupied her; and when Lady Curtis said, smiling, “What was the great piece of news--an old enough story, I suppose?” Lucy meant no deception in her response. But by and by the fact began to acquire its real importance in her mind. She had no longer a moment’s doubt on the subject; had not instinct whispered it to her at once? Nancy was here, within her reach, within her influence; and only one thing could be meant by this, that the rebellious young woman who had made Arthur so unhappy, had seen the error of her ways, and was willing to depart from them, to seek the favour of her husband’s family, to endeavour to please them, that there might be a reconciliation and universal pardoning of all offences, in prospect. Lucy, when she wholly realized the important fact thus communicated to her, was lost in perplexity. What was she to do? A strange reluctance sprang up in her mind to speak of it, to bring it to any one’s observation. Would it not be better to let this strange young woman, by whom Lucy had at once been attracted and repelled, work out her intentions, whatever they were? It was not natural that the young lady should think with special kindness, or, indeed, without a certain prejudice, of this interloper. Lucy’s feeling, to start with, had been all in her sister-in-law’s favour. Before the marriage had taken place, when the question was whether Arthur should be persuaded or forced into faithlessness to his promise, Lucy had been Nancy’s faithful, if reserved, supporter. She had been horrified by the suggestion that a man’s plighted word and promised love were not binding, when the woman to whom they were pledged was in an inferior class. This doctrine had shocked and revolted every feeling in her heart, and when her family had made ignoble efforts to buy off Nancy, Lucy had been as indignant as Arthur was. But now everything was changed. The resemblances in nature and the diversity in circumstances, which gave her a fellow-feeling with