some time, till she seemed to fear that she had wounded his feelings.  She awoke in the night, and thought and thought on the same thing, till she had worked herself into a feverish fret about it.  When it was morning she looked across at the tower, and sitting down, impulsively wrote the following note:

'DEAR MR. ST. CLEEVE, --I cannot allow you to remain under the impression that I despised your scientific endeavours in speaking as I did last night.  I think you were too sensitive to my remark.  But perhaps you were agitated with the labours of the day, and I fear that watching so late at night must make you very weary.  If I can help you again, please let me know.  I never realized the grandeur of astronomy till you showed me how to do so.  Also let me know about the new telescope.  Come and see me at any time.  After your great kindness in being my messenger I can never do enough for you.  I wish you had a mother or sister, and pity your loneliness!  I am lonely too.--Yours truly, VIVIETTE CONSTANTINE.'

She was so anxious that he should get this letter the same day that she ran across to the column with it during the morning, preferring to be her own emissary in so curious a case.  The door, as she had expected, was locked; and, slipping the letter under it, she went home again.  During lunch her ardour in the cause of Swithin's hurt feelings cooled down, till she exclaimed to herself, as she sat at her lonely table, 'What could have possessed me to write in that way!'

After lunch she went faster to the tower than she had gone in the early morning, and peeped eagerly into the chink under the door.  She could discern no letter, and, on trying the latch, found that the door would open.  The letter was gone, Swithin having obviously arrived in the interval.

She blushed a blush which seemed to say, 'I am getting foolishly interested in this young man.'  She had, in her own opinion, somewhat overstepped the bounds of dignity.  Her instincts did not square well with the formalities of her existence, and she walked home despondently.

Had a concert, bazaar, lecture, or Dorcas meeting required the patronage and support of Lady Constantine at this juncture, the circumstance would probably have been sufficient to divert her mind from Swithin St. Cleeve and astronomy for some little time.  But as none of these incidents were within the range of expectation--Welland House and parish lying far from large towns and watering-places--the void in her outer life continued, and with it the void in her life within.

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