The clock was pointing to two, when May rose from the velvet-seated chair, and went to the little writing-table which stood in another part of the room.  She took a plain sheet of note-paper, and, with a hand far from steady, began, not writing, but printing, certain words, in large, ill-formed capitals.

“HAVE MORE COURAGE.  AIM HIGHER.  IT IS NOT TOO LATE.”

At this achievement she gazed smilingly.  The ink having dried, she folded the paper, and put it into an envelope, which she closed.  Then her face indicated a new effort.  She could think of only one way of disguising her hand in cursive—­the common device of sloping it backwards.  This she attempted.  The result failing to please her, she tried again on a second envelope, and this time with success; the writing looked masculine, and in no respect suggested its true authorship.  She had addressed the letter to Dyce Lashmar, Esq., at Rivenoak.

Nine o’clock next morning saw her out of doors.  In Sloane Street she found a hansom, and was driven rap idly eastward.  Before ten she sat in her own room again, glowing with satisfaction.

CHAPTER XVIII

“At last,” declared Mrs. Lashmar, “it really looks as if Dyce was going to do something.  I’ve just been writing to Lady Susan, and I have let her see unmistakably what I think of her friendship.  But I’m very glad Dyce isn’t indebted to her, for a more unendurable woman, when she thinks she has done anyone a kindness, doesn’t exist.  If she gets a place for a servant-girl, all the world is told of it, and she expects you to revere her saintly benevolence.  I am very glad that she never did anything for Dyce.  Indeed, I always felt that she was very little use.  I doubt whether she has the slightest influence with respectable people.”

It was just after breakfast, and the day promised to be the hottest of the year.  The vicar, heavy-laden man, had sat down in his study to worry over parish accounts.  When the door opened to admit his wife, he quivered with annoyance.  Mrs. Lashmar had a genius for the malapropos.  During breakfast, when her talk would have mattered little, she had kept silence; now that her husband particularly wished to be alone with his anxieties, she entered with an air forboding long discourse.

“Twenty-three pounds, four shillings and sixpence,” muttered the vicar, as he passed a handkerchief over his moist forehead.  “Dear me! how close it is!  Twenty-three—­”

“If Dyce is elected,” pursued the lady, “we must celebrate the occasion in some really striking way.  Of course there must be a dinner for all our poor—­”

“What I want to know,” interrupted Mr. Lashmar, with mild irritableness, “is, how he proposes to meet his expenses, and what he is going to live upon.  If he is still looking to me—­I hope you haven’t encouraged him in any hope of that kind?”

“Of course not.  In my last letter I expressly reminded him that our affairs were getting into a lamentable muddle.  Of course, if I had had the management of them, this wouldn’t have come about.—­Do you know what I have been thinking?  It might be an advantage to Dyce if you made friends with the clergy at Hollingford.  Couldn’t you go over one day, and call on the rector.  I see he’s a Cambridge man, but—­”