There was one little girl in the group whose face Penelope did not recollect. The child looked very earnestly at her, and seemed several times as if about to make an effort to speak, but awe held her back. With her, and as if urging her on to speak, was another and greater girl. And the greater girl moved the little one towards Miss Primrose, and the poor little girl coloured up to the eyes; but she had gone too far to retract, and she was emboldened at last by Penelope's kind looks to make a very pretty curtsey and say, "Please Miss--" The poor thing could get no farther, till Penelope relieved her embarrassment by taking hold of her hand and saying, "Well, my dear, what have you to say to me? I have no recollection that I have ever seen you before. How long have you lived at Smatterton?" Then the little one was emboldened to speak, and she told Penelope that she had but recently come there, and that she had taken the liberty to speak, because she had some few weeks ago picked up a letter directed to Miss Primrose. Hereupon the girl drew from her pocket a handkerchief which was carefully folded up, and when with great ceremony the handkerchief was unfolded, a letter made its appearance, which did not seem to have required much careful enveloping to keep it clean. It was miserably dirty, and the direction was barely visible. Penelope wondered indeed that the child had been able to make out the inscription, so far as to ascertain to whom it was addressed; but the hand-writing was so manifestly Robert Darnley's, that the young lady felt too much emotion and too eager a curiosity to wait to ask any farther particulars of the mode, place and time in which the letter was found. Only waiting to ask the child her name and place of abode, and to make such acknowledgment as is expected in such cases, Penelope hastened home full of contending and harassing thoughts, unable to form the slightest conjecture of a satisfactory nature concerning this strange occurrence. Now this letter, together with that which Robert Darnley had written to Mr Primrose, and which Mr Primrose gave to his daughter for her perusal, set the question completely at rest in the mind of Penelope, and assured her that the young gentleman had not by any neglect designed to break off the correspondence.