“I can at least do right in that respect,” she said. “I can undo the past to some extent and lessen the load of sin upon my shoulders. I will write to Arthur Leighton; I surely need tell no one else,—not yet, at least, lest he has outlived his love for Anna. I can trust to his discretion and to his honor too; he will not betray me, unless it is necessary, and then only to Anna. Edward would bid me do it if he could speak; he was some like Arthur Leighton.” And so with the dead man in Strasburg before her eyes, Mrs. Meredith nerved herself to write to Arthur Leighton, confessing the fraud imposed upon him, imploring his forgiveness, and begging him to spare her as much as possible. “I know from Anna’s own lips how much she has always loved you,” she wrote in conclusion, “but she does not know of the stolen letter, and I leave you to make such use of the knowledge as you shall think proper.” She did not put in a single plea for poor little Lucy dancing so gayly over the mine just ready to explode. She was purely selfish still with all her qualms of conscience, and only thought of Anna, whom she would make happy at another’s sacrifice. So she never hinted that it was possible for Arthur to keep his word pledged to Lucy Harcourt, and as she finished her own letter and placed it in an envelope with the one which Arthur had sent to Anna, her thoughts leaped forward to the wedding she would give her niece,—a wedding not quite like that she had designed for Mrs. Thornton Hastings, but a quiet, elegant affair, just suited to a clergyman who was marrying a Ruthven. CHAPTER XI. THE LETTER RECEIVED.