’As for Major Grantly, if he be such a man as I took him to be from the little I saw of him, all this would make no difference to him.  I am sure that it ought to make none.  Whether it should not make a difference in you is another question.  I think it should; and I think your answer to him should be that you could not even consider any such proposition while your father was in so great trouble.  I am so much older than you, and seem to have so much experience, that I do not scruple, as you will see, to come down upon you with all the weight of my wisdom.

’About that other subject I had rather say nothing.  I have known your cousin all my life almost; and I regard no one more kindly than I do him.  When I think of my friends, he is always the one of the dearest.  But when one thinks of going beyond friendship, even if one tries to do so, there are so many barriers!

’Your affectionate friend,
’Lily Dale

’Mamma bids me say that she would be delighted to have you here whenever it might suit you to come; and I add to this message my entreaty that you will come at once.  You say that you think you ought to leave Miss Prettyman’s for a while.  I can well understand your feeling; but as your sister is with your mother, surely you had better come to us—­I mean quite at once.  I will not scruple to tell you what mamma says, because I know your good sense.  She says that as the interest of the school may possibly be concerned, and as you have no regular engagement, she thinks you ought to leave Silverbridge; but she says that it will be better that you come to us than that you should go home.  If you went home, people might say that had left in some sort of disgrace.  Come to us, and when all this is put right, then you go back to Silverbridge; and then, if a certain person speaks again, you can make a different answer.  Mamma quite understands that you are to come; so you have only to ask your own mamma, and come at once.’

This letter, the reader will understand, did not reach Grace Crawley till after the all-important Thursday; but before that day had come round, Grace had told Miss Prettyman—­had told both the Miss Prettymans—­that she was resolved to leave them.  She had done this without consulting her mother, driven to it by various motives.  She knew her father’s conduct was being discussed by the girls at school, and that things were said of him which it could not but be for the disadvantage of Miss Prettyman that anyone should say of a teacher in the establishment.  She felt, too, that she could not hold up her head in Silverbridge in these days, as it would become her to do if she retained her position.  She did struggle gallantly, and succeeded much more nearly than she was herself aware.  She was all but able to carry herself as though no terrible accusation was being made against her father.  Of the struggle, however, she was not herself the less conscious, and she told herself