Just then some one turned in from the road.  It was Eliza, and she was in too much haste to take heed of the milking gear.

“Oh, Miss Sophia.  I’m so glad I’ve met you, and alone.  We’ve been so busy at the hotel with a cheap excursion, I’ve been trying all day to get a word to you.  Look here!” (she thrust some crumpled letters into Sophia’s hand) “I thought you’d better see those, and say something to the girls.  They’ll get themselves into trouble if they go on as silly as this.  It seems it’s some silly ‘post office’ they’ve had in a tree between them and that Harkness.  I’ve had that letter from him, and certainly, Miss Sophia, if he’s as much to blame as them, he’s acted civil enough now.  He had a better heart than most men, I believe, for all he bragged about it.  He forgot where he had thrown their letters as waste paper, and you’ll see by that letter of his he took some trouble to write to me to go and get them, for fear they should be found and the girls talked about.”

Sophia stood still in dismay.

“There!” said Eliza, “I knew you’d feel hurt, but I thought you’d better know for all that.  There’s no harm done, only they’d better have a good setting down about it.”  She began to turn back again.  “I must go,” she said, “the dining-room girls are rushed off their feet; but if I were you, Miss Sophia, I wouldn’t say a word to anyone else about it.  Some one came in while I was getting these letters, but it was dark and I dodged round and made off without being seen, so that I needn’t explain.  It wouldn’t do for the girls, you know—­”

Sophia turned the letters about in her hand.  One was from Cyril Harkness to Eliza; the others were poor, foolish little notes, written by Blue and Red.  Louise came out of the yard and passed them into the field, and Sophia thrust the letters into her dress.

That Eliza should naively give her advice concerning the training of her sisters was a circumstance so in keeping with the girl’s force of character that her late mistress hardly gave it a thought, nor had she time at that moment to wonder where the letters had been left and found.  It was the thought that the family reputation for sense and sobriety had apparently been in the hands of an unprincipled stranger, and had been preserved only by his easy good-nature and by Eliza’s energy, that struck her with depressing and irritating force.  Had the girls come in her way just then, the words she would have addressed to them would have been more trenchant than wise, but as Eliza was by her side, retreating towards the road, she felt no desire to discuss the matter with her.

She observed now that Eliza looked worn and miserable as she had never seen her look before, unless, indeed, it had been in the first few days she ever saw her.  The crowded state of the hotel could hardly account for this.  “I hope, Eliza, that having despised that suitor of yours when he was here, you are not repenting now he is gone.”