'_Heiress! Transaction!_ My word, Clothilde, I could shake you! Cynthia is not a girl to be met in a lane,' cried Mrs. Hennifer breathlessly. 'The next thing you will assert is that he is going to marry her for the purpose of being near you. Preposterous! You don't understand. He did not know she was an heiress when he proposed to her. You will have to make up your mind not to call him Lucius and also to stay at home. So you went to the Mires again after I had been here that day? Highly creditable! And how long did you mean to stay there this time? You never will be satisfied until you have created a scandal. I don't suppose Mr. Danby knows where you are or anything about you, and cares less, I should think. I wonder you haven't thought of writing to inform him of the interesting and agreeable facts. Ah! but I suppose you don't know his address? Well, he'll be at Lafer soon.' 'I should not think of writing to him there.' 'I should think not indeed. I don't advise you even to ask him for mercy by not acknowledging you to Severn's face. Leave it to him. He'll soon respect Severn sufficiently to wish not to humiliate him. But you surely have not seriously thought of writing to him at all?' Mrs. Severn smiled, and a faint colour flickered into her face for a moment. 'I did,' she said; 'I confess to the folly. You know I went to the Mires again--you have heard? I began a letter to him that day to tell him where I was. It seemed best that he should know. I wrote it on the moor, and I was startled by--some one coming for me. I slipped it into a book I had taken to read, and in the hurry I dropped it and never thought of it again for weeks.' 'Letter and all? I should think you have wondered if they have ever been found.' 'I have indeed. But I daren't say a word about them.' 'And what has possessed you to be telling me the truth, eh? You're not in the habit of telling the truth, Clothilde.' 'You are very hard upon me,' she murmured. 'God knows I don't wish to be,' Mrs. Hennifer burst out, with a voice that suddenly trembled. 'Be hard upon yourself. It seems to me, inconceivable though it be, that you are trifling with memories on which it is sheer wickedness to dwell. You trifled with him once; for Heaven's sake don't trifle with yourself.'