"As a matter of simple justice, I refer the question to you. What am I to do now? My thoughts on the subject have been many, I need not say, since I saw you. May I ask your father to continue at Brentburn as my curate? I am quite inexperienced; his assistance would be of infinite advantage to me; and, in point of fact, as is natural at our respective ages, I should be his curate, not he mine. May I do this? or what else can I do? The position in which I find myself is a painful one. It would have been much easier, I assure you, to have shuffled the whole matter off upon Ruffhead, and to have withdrawn. But I felt a responsibility upon me since I met you; and I ask you now urgently, feeling that I have almost a right to your advice, what am I to do? "Yours very truly, "ROGER MILDMAY." This letter excited Cicely greatly. By chance it arrived before the others had come into the breakfast-room, and she was able to read it without any looker-on. She put it hurriedly into her pocket before her father and sister appeared. She did not know what answer to make, neither did she feel comfortable about making any answer, and she said nothing about it all day; though--oh, how the letter burned her pocket and her mind! She had scarcely ever known what it was to have a secret before, and not to tell Mab seemed almost wrong. She felt that there was something clandestine about her, going up and down the house with that letter in her possession which nobody knew of. And to answer it--to answer it without any one knowing? This she could not do. She bore the burden of her secret all the day, and surprised Mab very much by her silence about Mr. Mildmay, whom the younger sister abused roundly. "Perhaps it was not his fault," Cicely faltered. What had come over her? What change had happened? Mab was lost in a maze. The difficulty, however, was solved in a very unexpected way. Next morning--no later--Mr. St. John himself had a letter from Oxford; a letter which made him change colour, and bend his meek brows, and then smile--but not like himself. "Cicely, this must be your doing," he said. "I never made any complaints to Mr. Mildmay, nor said anything to call for his pity. He asks me to be his curate," the old man added, after a pause, with a strange smile. No one had suspected that Mr. St. John was proud, until it became apparent all at once how proud he was. "His curate--O papa! you will stay here, and never go away at all," cried Mab out of the fulness of her heart. Cicely knew better. She grew pale, and to stop that outcry of inconvenient delight, grasped tightly her sister's hand.