a generous eagerness to make atonement for a wrong which she has innocently inflicted on another person.  It is plain that she has loved him, throughout the estrangement between them.  In more than one place the rapture of discovering that he has deserved to be loved, breaks its way innocently through the stoutest formalities of pen and ink, and even defies the stronger restraint still of writing to a stranger.  Is it possible (I ask myself, in reading this delightful letter) that I, of all men in the world, am chosen to be the means of bringing these two young people together again?  My own happiness has been trampled under foot; my own love has been torn from me.  Shall I live to see a happiness of others, which is of my making—­a love renewed, which is of my bringing back?  Oh merciful Death, let me see it before your arms enfold me, before your voice whispers to me, “Rest at last!”

There are two requests contained in the letter.  One of them prevents me from showing it to Mr. Franklin Blake.  I am authorised to tell him that Miss Verinder willingly consents to place her house at our disposal; and, that said, I am desired to add no more.

So far, it is easy to comply with her wishes.  But the second request embarrasses me seriously.

Not content with having written to Mr. Betteredge, instructing him to carry out whatever directions I may have to give, Miss Verinder asks leave to assist me, by personally superintending the restoration of her own sitting-room.  She only waits a word of reply from me to make the journey to Yorkshire, and to be present as one of the witnesses on the night when the opium is tried for the second time.

Here, again, there is a motive under the surface; and, here again, I fancy that I can find it out.

What she has forbidden me to tell Mr. Franklin Blake, she is (as I interpret it) eager to tell him with her own lips, before he is put to the test which is to vindicate his character in the eyes of other people.  I understand and admire this generous anxiety to acquit him, without waiting until his innocence may, or may not, be proved.  It is the atonement that she is longing to make, poor girl, after having innocently and inevitably wronged him.  But the thing cannot be done.  I have no sort of doubt that the agitation which a meeting between them would produce on both sides—­reviving dormant feelings, appealing to old memories, awakening new hopes—­would, in their effect on the mind of Mr. Blake, be almost certainly fatal to the success of our experiment.  It is hard enough, as things are, to reproduce in him the conditions as they existed, or nearly as they existed, last year.  With new interests and new emotions to agitate him, the attempt would be simply useless.

And yet, knowing this, I cannot find it in my heart to disappoint her.  I must try if I can discover some new arrangement, before post-time, which will allow me to say Yes to Miss Verinder, without damage to the service which I have bound myself to render to Mr. Franklin Blake.