"I hope you will allow me to thank you for your lovely drawing. It gave me a happy Christmas. The harebells say to me all that you would say yourself. They do indeed help me. Again thanking you, and with every good wish for the New Year,-- "I am yours most gratefully,-- "Guy Waynflete." This composition, which had cost Guy much pains, was brought to Florella, as she sat putting delicate finishing touches to her latest picture, a procession of snails, walking along the top of a moss-grown wall, moist with a recent shower. "To take the air, and hear the thrushes sing," was the motto written below, and, as Violet Staunton had said, Florella must have got inside a snail's shell and seen the world from between its horns when she painted it. She laid her brush down now, and with throbbing heart held the letter against her cheek. Yes, she had known that he wanted the harebells. She had known it not only because, from one source and another, from Godfrey's letter to Constancy, and from Cuthbert Staunton's reports to his sisters, she knew something of his outward life, but from that curious inward sense that told her when a time of special trial was upon him. The inward vision was dim and faint, the very intensity of her anxiety for him blurred and confused it, and the outward intelligence seemed either to render it superfluous or to show how little it was worth. If she could but "see" more clearly! That same evening she went to a party with her sister. The "willing game" was played, and there were thought-reading experiments and wonders performed with "Planchette." A lady looked into Florella's eyes as she sat apart, and told her that she would be more successful than any one in the room. She ought to "develop her faculties." Florella's heart gave a great leap. Could she obtain more power to help him so? The fear of betraying either his secret or her knowledge of it held her back. That, and an instinct that no stranger should intermeddle with the deep things which filled her with wonder and awe. She refused to try, and saved her delicate spirit from risks unknown. Constancy tried every experiment, and laughed at them all. No influence touched her spirit or shook her nerves. She got hold of "Planchette," and manipulated it so cleverly, guessed so keenly, and invented so boldly that she took in a whole group of not very wise inquirers, who thought she had developed a surprising power of receptiveness. She laughed and held her peace; but Florella still held apart, and the more she saw, the more she felt that she must guard Guy's experiences from such intrusion. She found that it would have been very easy to betray them. It was not in this surface region of easy puzzles and useless surprises that her soul touched his. In two or three days' time she received another note from him, hastily written and much less formal in style.