At last Angela came to the letter that she had that very morning received from George.  Mr. Fraser read it carefully.

“At any rate,” he said, “he is behaving like a gentleman now.  On the whole, that is a nice letter.  You will be troubled with him no more.”

“Yes,” answered Angela, and then flushing up at the memory of George’s arguments in the lane, “but it is certainly time that he did, for he had no business, oh, he had no business to speak to me as he spoke, and he a man old enough to be my father.”

Mr. Fraser’s pale cheeks coloured a little.

“Don’t be hard upon him because he is old, Angela—­which by the way he is not, he is nearly ten years my junior—­for I fear that old men are just as liable to be made fools of by a pretty face as young ones.”

From that moment, not knowing the man’s real character, Mr. Fraser secretly entertained a certain sympathy for George’s sufferings, arising no doubt from a fellow-feeling.  It seemed to him that he could understand a man going very far indeed when his object was to win Angela:  not that he would have done it himself, but he knew the temptation and what it cost to struggle against it.

It was nearly dark when at length Angela, rising to go, warmly pressed his hand, and thanked him in her own sweet way for his goodness and kind counsel.  And then, declining his offer of escort, and saying that she would come and see him again on the morrow, she departed on her homeward path.

The first thing that met her gaze on the hall-table at the Abbey House was a note addressed to herself in a handwriting that she had seen in many washing bills, but never before on an envelope.  She opened it in vague alarm.  It ran as follows: 

“Miss,—­Yore father has just dismissed me, saying that he is too pore to keep me any longer, which is a matter as I holds my own opinion on, and that I am too uneddicated to be in yore company, which is a perfect truth.  But, miss, not feeling any how ekal to bid you good-bye in person after bringing you up by hand and doing for you these many years, I takes the liberty to write to you, miss, to say good-bye and God bless you, my beautiful angel, and I shall be to be found down at the old housen at the end of the drift as my pore husband left me, which is fortinately just empty, and p’raps you will come and see me at times, miss.

                                   “Yore obedient servant,
          
                                              “Pigott.

“I opens this again to say how as I have tied up your things a bit afore I left leaving mine till to-morrow, when, if living, I shall send for them.  If you please, miss, you will find yore clean night-shift in the left hand drawyer, and sorry am I that I can’t be there to lay it out for you.  I shall take the liberty to send up for your washing, as it can’t be trusted to any one.”

Angela read the letter through, and then sank back upon a chair and burst into a storm of tears.  Partially recovering herself, however, she rose and entered her father’s study.