"Dear Anne, here is the wine; pray take some. Are you ill?" "No, no, no!" said Lady Anne; "I will not have any--I will do better." She withdrew her hands from her eyes as she spoke, and there were evident marks of tears upon her cheek. "You have not answered me, Colonel Middleton," she said, "and I will answer for you. It was very rude--or rather it would have been very rude had there not been a cause. But do you know, sir, you are so very like a dear friend whom I have lost--a friend of childhood and of early days--a friend of all who were most dear to me--one whom I loved as a brother, though I often used to tease him sadly, and who loved me in the same way, too, though he used to love this dear beautiful girl here better--that in a moment, when I saw you, the brightest and the sweetest part of life came back; and then I remembered his hard fate and shameful treatment, and I thought I should have gone mad." She paused for a moment, and gazed at him earnestly again; and then, starting up, she cried-- "But what is the use of all this?--Do you not know me? Do you pretend to have forgotten me? I am Anne Mellent. Henry! Henry! did you think you could hide yourself from me or her?" And she held out her hand to him, warmly. Henry Hayley took it and pressed it in his own, saying-- "I cannot and will not attempt to deceive you, dear Lady Anne; but yet I must beg you to keep my secret faithfully, for some time at least, till I have resolved upon my course." "Be sure of that, Henry," replied Lady Anne, thoughtfully: "your course must be well thought of, but I will be one of the council, as well as Maria--nay, more," she added, with a sparkling look: "as she has had one long conference with you, all alone, I will have one also. It shall be this very night, too, in my own house here. There--do not look surprised, Maria. You know my reputation is not made of very brittle materials, or it would have been broken to pieces long ago. Yours is a very different sort of thing; you have spoiled it by over tenderness, like a child, and made it so delicate that it will not bear rough handling. I was resolved that mine should be more robust, and therefore set out with accustoming it to everything. I do believe that half the mad-headed things I have done in life were merely performed to establish a character for doing anything I pleased. They could but say that Anne Mellent was mad--and I took care not to go the length that is shut-up-able."