In any case she would have written him a long letter, seizing the first possible moment of communicating with him, carrying out the first instinct of her heart to continue the long love-interview which had made this week the centre of all her days. But Lily threw even more than this into her letter. She said more, naturally, than she intended to say, and brought forth a hundred arguments, each more eloquent, more urgent than the other, to show cause why she should join him immediately, why she should not be left, nobody knowing any thing about her, in this Highland hermitage. The lines poured from her pen; she was herself so moved by her own pleas that she got up once or twice and walked about to dissipate the impulse which she had to set out at once, to walk if it were needful to Edinburgh, to claim her proper place. And it was not till the long, glowing, fervent letter was written that she paused a little and asked herself if Ronald had really only left her behind because it was impossible to get a house between the terms, if his first business was to look out for a house, so as to have it ready for her by the next term, by Whit-Sunday, was it right to argue with him and upbraid him as if he intended the separation to go on forever? Lily threw down her pen which she had dipped in fire--not the fire of anger, but of love just sharpened and pointed with a little indignation--and her countenance fell. No, if that were so, she must not address him in this heroic way. After all it was quite reasonable what he had said: it was extremely difficult to get a house between the terms. And perhaps he would not have been justified in engaging one at Michaelmas, before any thing was decided what to do. He could not have done that; and what, then, could he do but wait till Whit-Sunday? and, for a man like him, with his own ways of action, not, unfortunately, though she loved him, like Lily’s, it was perhaps natural that there should be no premature disclosure, that as they were parted by circumstances it should remain so, without taking the world into their confidence, or summoning Sir Robert to cast his niece who had deceived him out of the shelter which her husband did not think unbecoming for her now. Lily threw down her pen, making a splash of ink upon the table--not a large one, to spoil it, but a mark, which would always remind her of what she had done or had been about to do.