with my misery as keen and vigorous as when I walked out with it in the morning hours. In the drawing-room I find mother, and standing before her with a perturbed countenance is Simpkins.
"You should have told me this before," she is saying, with an unusual severity in her voice; and I sit down idly wondering what that foolish old man has been doing now.
"I know it, ma'am," he stammers. "When I caught the young woman meddling with the post-bag, she said she only wanted to get out a letter of her own that she had written, but did not wish to have posted. I believed the story, ma'am, and did not tell you."
"What is all this about?" I ask. "Mother, who has been tampering with the post-bag?"
"Jane, the under-housemaid," says mother. "It seems she ran away from here this morning without a word, and Simpkins tells me that he caught her meddling———"
"She must have meddled with it more than once," I say, putting my hand to my head. Why did you not speak of this before? I cry, turning upon the man in a fury. "Do you know what you have done? Go out of my sight!"
He stares at me for a moment; then, as I stamp my foot, he turns and flees.
"Mother! mother!" I say, groping my way across the room to her. "I see it all now. He never got my letters; I never got his. That woman was Silvia's spy."
"Poor little daughter!" she says, and her tears fall fast and heavy on my uplifted face. If only I could weep!—if only this terrible tightness about my heart would relax!
"Mr. Skipworth," announces Simpkins, tremblingly, half an hour later; and I escape by one door as he enters by another. He has come to talk about my marriage, no doubt. In my present state of mind his voice would send me straight into Bedlam. I
