The postman called for the letter-bag at six every evening; so I waited at the schoolroom window until I saw him come up to the house and heard Sarah give him the bag; then I ran out into the hall, as if I had only just finished my letter, and put it into the bag which he held. Sarah could not even see the direction as I put it in, and I congratulated myself upon my artful strategy; but I might have known that she was not to be baffled so. I had stood at the door and watched him turn into the drive, and returned to the schoolroom in a flutter of excitement at my own audacity, when from the window I saw Sarah flit after him. I dashed out on to the lawn, and got into the drive just in time to see the postman fasten up the bag and go on again, while Sarah, saying something about “a misdirection,” put a letter into her pocket; and I knew that it was mine. With my heart beating fast, I walked up boldly to her. “What did you take my letter out of the bag for, Sarah?” said I, half choking with anger. “It’s not your letter, miss. What should I want with any letter of yours?” said she, looking down at me insolently. “It’s a letter to my sister that I’ve forgotten to put the number of the street on.” I knew quite well that this was a falsehood, but I could not prove it; for I had indeed been too far off to recognize my letter when she put it into her pocket, and my moral certainty counted for nothing. She knew this, and stalked off defiantly to the house with my letter, while I crept back to the schoolroom, and sobbed bitterly at the tyranny I was suffering from this hateful woman. Well, it would soon be over now--that was a comfort. I would tell Mr. Rayner all I had seen on Tuesday night, and about the cart Laurence had met outside--perhaps I would not mention it was Laurence who saw it--and about Parkes’s wishing to avoid me at Denham Court. I should not dare to suggest to Mr. Rayner any doubt about Gordon, who seemed to be in some way a personal friend of his. But now, with all my thoughts turned to jewels and jewel-robberies, I could not help thinking again about that strange disappearance of my own pendant while I was staying at Denham Court, and its restoration by this man. Then his treating Tom Parkes as a stranger at Denham Court, when I had seen them together one night at the Alders, seemed to me now a rather suspicious circumstance. I congratulated myself on having been so cautious in my letter to Laurence that Sarah would not learn much by reading it, and wondered when I could make an excuse to go to Beaconsburgh, to post one to him with my own hands. It seemed very hard to be cut off in this way from the relief of opening my heart to him; but it would be all right on the morrow, when Mr. Rayner came back--she would not dare to annoy me then.