Thus meditating, her eye fell upon Avice’s letter. At first she could only look at it, she could not open it. With the sight of that familiar handwriting there came rushing over her mind a vivid recollection of all the past sweetness and bitterness connected with Avice and those belonging to her. There came the recollection of Jerome–a memory which had slumbered since her illness, and which she had never allowed to awaken. Now it sprang forth again, irresistible, strong, and overpowering. Again she felt his influence, recalled to mind the love she had borne him, the–what was this feeling she experienced even now? Surely she did not love him yet? ‘No!’ cried every voice within her. And yet, beyond them all, was a whisper, more potent than any of them, asking what it was that she felt, demanding to know the meaning of this eager longing, this _Sehnsucht_, this yearning. ‘I am sure I have done wrong. I have made a horrible mistake!’ she repeated to herself. ‘What am I to do? How shall I repair it?’ With an effort she opened Avice’s letter, and read it with a throbbing heart. The girl gave a full account of her arrival at home, and of all that had happened since. She implored Sara to remember that she had known nothing of all that was going on, and not to punish her for Jerome’s sin. She related how the marriage was over, how Jerome and Nita were away, and she was at the Abbey with Mr. Bolton and Miss Shuttleworth as her companions; how Mr. Bolton was going to live at Monk’s Gate, ‘when they came home,’ but that she, Avice, was to live at the Abbey with ‘them.’ With beating heart Sara read Avice’s description of Nita, and understood at once that it must have been Wellfield throughout, who had played a double game, and had deceived both the woman he loved, and the woman whom he had married. This was no case of a vulgar heiress who was anxious to ally herself with a man of old name; it was the case of a very simple-hearted loving girl, who had lost her heart irrevocably, and who would evidently suffer as intensely in her way, if not so passionately, as Sara Ford herself had suffered, if ever she knew the truth. Avice betrayed again and again her liking for her new surroundings–a liking which she uneasily felt that she could not gratify without some disloyalty to her friend. As for Jerome–such had been the revulsion of feeling caused by his conduct, that Avice could not write of him without a certain tinge of bitter sarcasm cropping up through her words; and more than once occurred a kind of apology for even mentioning his name in a letter to Sara. ‘Tell me what to do,’ she concluded. ‘You have been my guide for so long; I trust you so implicitly that I feel lost without you. Send me one word, Sara, for whatever you say or do must be right.’