`Yes. It was very late, but there was a girl up at needlework in the house, and she helped me to rouse Mrs Clements. Mrs Clements is my friend. A good, kind woman, but not like Mrs Fairlie. Ah no, nobody is like Mrs Fairlie!'

`Is Mrs Clements an old friend of yours? Have you known her a long time?'

`Yes, she was a neighbour of ours once, at home, in Hampshire, and liked me, and took care of me when I was a little girl. Years ago. when she went away from us, she wrote down in my Prayer-hook for me where she was going to live in London, and she said, ``If you are ever in trouble, Anne, come to me. I have no husband alive to say me nay, and no children to look after, and I will take care of you.'' Kind words, were they not? I suppose I remember them because they were kind. It's little enough I remember besides -- little enough, little enough!'

`Had you no father or mother to take care of you?'

`Father? -- I never saw him -- I never heard mother speak of him. father? Ah, dear! he is dead, I suppose.'

`And your mother?'

`I don't get on well with her. We are a trouble and a fear to each other.'

A trouble and a fear to each other! At those words the suspicion crossed my mind, for the first time, that her mother might be the person who had placed her under restraint.

`Don't ask me about mother,' she went on. `I'd rather talk of Mrs Clements. Mrs Clements is like you, she doesn't think that I ought to be back in the Asylum, and she is as glad as you are that I escaped from it. She cried over my misfortune, and said it must be kept secret from everybody.'

Her `misfortune.' In what sense was she using that word? In a sense which might explain her motive in writing the anonymous letter? In a sense which might show it to be the too common and too customary motive that has led many a woman to interpose anonymous hindrances to the marriage of the man who has ruined her? I resolved to attempt the clearing up of this doubt before more words passed between us on either side.

`What misfortune?' I asked.

`The misfortune of my being shut up,' she answered, with every appearance of feeling surprised at my question. `What other misfortune could there be?'

I determined to persist, as delicately and forbearingly as possible. It was of very great importance that I should be absolutely sure of every step in the investigation which I now gained in advance.

`There is another misfortune,' I said, `to which a woman may be liable, and by which she may suffer lifelong sorrow and shame.'

`What is it?' she asked eagerly.

`The misfortune of believing too innocently in her own virtue, and in the faith and honour of the man she loves,' I answered.

She looked up at me with the artless bewilderment of a child. Not the slightest confusion or change of colour -- not the faintest trace of any secret consciousness of shame struggling to the surface appeared in her face -- that face which betrayed every other emotion with such transparent clearness. No words that ever were spoken could have assured me, as her look and manner now assured me, that the motive which I had assigned for her writing the letter and sending it to Miss Fairlie was plainly and distinctly the wrong one. That doubt, at any rate, was now set at rest; but the very removal of it opened a new