"What _is_ the matter?" she asked. "Your face frightens me."

It was useless to prolong the pain of the inevitable misunderstanding
between them. The one course to take was to silence all further
inquiries then and there. Strongly as she felt this, Anne's inbred
loyalty to Blanche still shrank from deceiving her to her face. "I might
write it," she thought. "I can't say it, with Arnold Brinkworth in the
same house with her!" Write it? As she reconsidered the word, a sudden
idea struck her. She opened the bedroom door, and led the way back into
the sitting-room.

"Gone again!" exclaimed Blanche, looking uneasily round the empty room.
"Anne! there's something so strange in all this, that I neither can, nor
will, put up with your silence any longer. It's not just, it's not kind,
to shut me out of your confidence, after we have lived together like
sisters all our lives!"

Anne sighed bitterly, and kissed her on the forehead. "You shall know
all I can tell you--all I _dare_ tell you," she said, gently. "Don't
reproach me. It hurts me more than you think."

She turned away to the side table, and came back with a letter in her
hand. "Read that," she said, and handed it to Blanche.

Blanche saw her own name, on the address, in the handwriting of Anne.

"What does this mean?" she asked.

"I wrote to you, after Sir Patrick had left me," Anne replied. "I meant