walk there was always some little contention as to who should accompany
her. It was very pleasant. Before she had been at Thorpe Castle long
Marion Arleigh was queen of the new world. In the midst of all her
happiness the first letter from Allan Lyster came like a thunderbolt.
She was naturally so frank, so candid, that the keeping of a secret was
most difficult to her. Her first impulse was to go to Lady Ridsdale and
tell her everything. Then she remembered that she had given a solemn
pledge of secrecy, and that she must not say one word.

It made her very unhappy. She did not like the sense of concealment. She
did not like having a secret of so much importance that she could share
with no one. Then it struck her, too, that the tone of the letter was
not quite what she liked; it was in some vague way different from the
tone of the people she was living with. She did not like that reiterated
petition, for secrecy was weighing heavily on her heart and soul. She
waited two days before answering that letter. She said to herself that
she ought to be very pleased to receive it, and that she was pleased;
yet something weighed on her mind and shadowed the perfect happiness she
had expected to feel.

Then she answered him, and again, for the first time in her life, she
sat with her pen in her hand, hardly knowing what to say. She had been
accustomed to writing page after page and never pausing. Since then
something seemed to have arisen in her life and to stand between them.
She did not care to tell him of the luxury of Thorpe Castle, the number
of visitors, the splendor of the entertainments.

"That will not interest him," she said; "his life is so different." A
strange sensation of uneasiness came over her as she remembered how
different it was. So she wrote a letter full of commonplaces, and when