"I am so glad you told me about Sir Rupert, Hilda. It is the doing something that helps me, and I should hardly have had enterprise for that. The penny post has awful possibilities of cruelty. Think of launching those letters into the dark, and then waiting for an answer--the horrible strain of it--and feeling in your cold heart all the time that no answer will come." "Poor penny post!" I said, laughing; "but think of all the happiness it brings as well!" "I can only think of the letters that never come, or the cruel and cold letters. But they are easier to bear than the silence." "Well, darling," I said soothingly, "the cruel and cold letters will never come to you, and the silence is only a pause before good news." "You think so, Hilda? I was always so afraid of Sir Rupert. I know it is silly, but the shadows out of one's childhood dominate one in a time of trouble." "Now, fret no more, Essie," I said; "I shall be with you to-night, and to-morrow will bring news. Think of yourself as a rich girl with a lover, and pity all the poor unloved ones like Hilda." "Ah! time was," she smiled, "in my romantic youth, when I thought the lover stage the one most desirable. Now I think it is cruel and full of fear. But I am going to be strong, Hilda, and hope for to-morrow. You will tell me everything?" "Everything; and be sure all will be well." When I went up to bed that night I found Esther sleeping placidly. The finger-tips were turned towards her palms, like a child's in sleep, and the long lashes made a shadow on her richly-coloured cheeks. I prayed hard that night that the morrow might not betray our confidence. CHAPTER XXIV. SIR RUPERT. The next day was cold and blustery, with winds that shook down the last remaining glory of the trees, and cold rain that beat the orange and scarlet of the dead leaves into so much black mud. It was a day when everything seems dreary. The big sunflowers in the lawn at Annagower broke with their own weight, and hung ruefully on the shattered stalk. The chrysanthemums were bruised and muddy, and the air was full of the repining of the afflicted branches. Even the robin sang as if his heart were not in it. I sat with Esther a great part of the morning, and would not let her talk too much on the subject that was in all our minds. I tried to distract her by telling her the things that had happened when I was in London; but though she was interested about Freda, and unselfishly rejoiced over my success with the publishers, yet I could see that her mind wandered, that her fingers beat the counterpane impatiently as though the time would never pass.