But it was absolutely necessary that the letter should be answered.  It would in her eyes have been a great sin to have let that day’s post go without carrying a letter from her to Courcy Castle,—­a sin of which she felt no temptation to be guilty.  It was an exquisite pleasure to her to seat herself at her little table, with her neat desk and small appurtenances for epistle-craft, and to feel that she had a letter to write in which she had truly much to say.  Hitherto her correspondence had been uninteresting and almost weak in its nature.  From her mother and sister she had hardly been yet parted; and though she had other friends, she had seldom found herself with very much to tell them by post.  What could she communicate to Mary Eames at Guestwick, which should be in itself exciting as she wrote it?  When she wrote to John Eames, and told “Dear John” that mamma hoped to have the pleasure of seeing him to tea at such an hour, the work of writing was of little moment to her, though the note when written became one of the choicest treasures of him to whom it was addressed.

But now the matter was very different.  When she saw the words “Dearest Adolphus” on the paper before her, she was startled with their significance.  “And four months ago I had never even heard of him,” she said to herself, almost with awe.  And now he was more to her, and nearer to her, than even was her sister or her mother!  She recollected how she had laughed at him behind his back, and called him a swell on the first day of his coming to the Small House, and how, also, she had striven, in her innocent way, to look her best when called upon to go out and walk with the stranger from London.  He was no longer a stranger now, but her own dearest friend.

She had put down her pen that she might think of all this—­by no means for the first time—­and then resumed it with a sudden start as though fearing that the postman might be in the village before her letter was finished.  “Dearest Adolphus, I need not tell you how delighted I was when your letter was brought to me this morning.”  But I will not repeat the whole of her letter here.  She had no incident to relate, none even so interesting as that of Mr Crosbie’s encounter with Mr Harding at Barchester.  She had met no Lady Dumbello, and had no counterpart to Lady Alexandrina, of whom, as a friend, she could say a word in praise.  John Eames’s name she did not mention, knowing that John Eames was not a favourite with Mr Crosbie; nor had she anything to say of John Eames, that had not been already said.  He had, indeed, promised to come over to Allington; but this visit had not been made when Lily wrote her first letter to Crosbie.  It was a sweet, good, honest love-letter, full of assurances of unalterable affection and unlimited confidence, indulging in a little quiet fun as to the grandees of Courcy Castle, and ending with a promise that she would be happy and contented if she might receive his letters constantly, and live with the hope of seeing him at Christmas.