Gillian looked on in some curiosity when the next day good Miss Hacket, enchanted with her dear Connie’s success, trotted up to display the lines to Lady Merrifield, who on her side felt bound to set an example alike of tenderness and sincerity, and was glad to be able to observe, ‘The lines run very smoothly. This must be a great pleasure to her.’ ‘Indeed it is! Connie is so clever. I always say I can’t think where she got it from; but we always tried to give her very advantage, and she was quite a favourite pupil at Miss Dormer’s. Is not it a sweet idea, the stillness of the evening broken by the sounds of battle, and then it proving to be only our brave defenders?’ ‘Yes,’ was the answer. ‘I have often thought of that, and of what it might be to hear those volleys of musketry in earnest. It has made me very thankful.’ So Miss Hacket went away gratified, and Gillian owned that it would have been useless to wound the good lady’s feelings by criticism, though her mother made her understand that if her opinion had been asked, or Connie herself had shown the verses, it would have been desirable to point out the faults, in a kindly spirit. The wonder was, how they could have found their way into the paper, and they were followed by more with the like signature. Indeed, the great sensational tale, ‘The Waif of the Moorland,’ was being copied out of the books where it had been first written. Dolores had sounded Mr. Flinders on the subject, and he had replied that he could ensure its consideration by a publisher, but that her fair friend must be aware that an untried author must be prepared for some risk. Constance could hardly abstain from communicating her hopes to her sister; but Mr. Leadbitter--to whom the poetry was duly shown--had given such a character of the Darminster Politician that Miss Hacket besought Constance to have no more to do with it. Besides, she was so entirely a lady, and so conscientious, that all her tender blindness would not have prevented her from being shocked at encouraging, or profiting by, a surreptitious correspondence. Constance declared that Mr. Leadbitter’s objection to the paper was merely political, and her sister was too willing that she should be gratified to protest any further. The copying had to be done in secret, since it was impossible to confess the hopes founded on Mr. Flinders, and it therefore lasted several weeks, each fresh portion being communicated to Dolores on Sunday afternoons. There were at first a few scruples on Constance’s part whether this were exactly a Sunday occupation; but Dolores pronounced that ‘the Sabbatarian system was gone out,’ and after Constance had introduced the ghostly double of her vanished waif walking in a surpliced procession, she persuaded herself that there was a sufficient aroma of religion about the story to bring it within the pale of Sunday books.