To find herself so pleasantly in error was agreeable enough, but she needed, nevertheless, a cause for conduct at least improbable; and which, in the circumstances in which she was placed, she could hardly help looking at as a little more extravagant than the occasion warranted--grateful, so very grateful as she was for it. She had yet to understand Flora’s actual position; and when she did so, her wonder at her reception was considerably modified. Flora had not one friend of her own sex. When old Wilton came to Harleydale, it did not occur to him to invite to his new home the gentry of the vicinity. He preferred seclusion; Flora thus had not even a female acquaintance. The events by which she had been rapidly surrounded were all of a character to render communion with a female friend all but imperative: one in whom she could confide, with whom she could consult, became in her isolation a want necessary to her present happiness. With each succeeding phase of circumstances her need grew greater, and never did she feel more keenly, than at the moment when Lotte arrived, the desolation of having no ear in which to pour her sorrows, no gentle eye to beam with sympathy upon her sadness, no tender voice to guide her in the path she ought to take. Of all the world, Lotte Clinton was the being she would have selected to fill up the void. Of all faces in the world to shine upon her now in her tribulation, Lotte Clinton’s was the most welcome. She knew Lotte’s kindly nature, and she knew her self-reliance. She knew that she loved, and that a cloud had settled on that love. She had faith in her pure, bright spirit; in its independence, in her clear sense of rectitude, and in that unwavering resolve which would maintain her in acting up to its dictates. Here was a mind to direct hers, a soul to sympathise with her, and a breast which she could safely make the repository of her secrets. Gradually Flora revealed the want under which she had so long suffered, and was not long in putting Lotte into possession of the fact that she looked upon her in the light of a very dear, dear friend. Lotte knew Hal Vivian. Ah! how that smoothed the path to many a revelation! and she listened with such deep attention and sympathy to Flora’s confession---though she had not sought it--that, in the fulness of her heart at finding at last a comforter and a counsellor in one of her own sex and of her own age--of her own cast of thought and feeling--Flora kept back nothing; and ere Lotte that night for the first time stood in the sick chamber of old Wilton, she was in full possession of all that Flora had to reveal.