Then there came a letter to her.  The question of the management of letters for young ladies is handled very differently in different houses.  In some establishments the post is as free to young ladies as it is to the reverend seniors of the household.  In others it is considered to be quite a matter of course that some experienced discretion should sit in judgment on the correspondence of the daughters of the family.  When Nora Rowley was living with her sister in Curzon Street, she would have been very indignant indeed had it been suggested to her that there was any authority over her letters vested in her sister.  But now, circumstanced as she was at St Diddulph’s, she did understand that no letter would reach her without her aunt knowing that it had come.  All this was distasteful to her, as were indeed all the details of her life at St Diddulph’s, but she could not help herself.  Had her aunt told her that she should never be allowed to receive a letter at all, she must have submitted till her mother had come to her relief.  The letter which reached her now was put into her hands by her sister, but it had been given to Mrs Trevelyan by Mrs Outhouse.  ‘Nora,’ said Mrs Trevelyan, ’here is a letter for you.  I think it is from Mr Stanbury.’

‘Give it me,’ said Nora greedily.

’Of course I will give it you.  But I hope you do not intend to correspond with him.’

‘If he has written to me I shall answer him of course,’ said Nora, holding her treasure.

’Aunt Mary thinks that you should not do so till papa and mamma have arrived.’

’If Aunt Mary is afraid of me let her tell me so, and I will contrive to go somewhere else.’  Poor Nora knew that this threat was futile.  There was no house to which she could take herself.

’She is not afraid of you at all, Nora.  She only says that she thinks you should not write to Mr Stanbury.’  Then Nora escaped to the cold but solitary seclusion of her bed-room and there she read her letter.

The reader may remember that Hugh Stanbury when he last left St Diddulph’s had not been oppressed by any of the gloomy reveries of a despairing lover.  He had spoken his mind freely to Nora, and had felt himself justified in believing that he had not spoken in vain.  He had had her in his arms, and she had found it impossible to say that she did not love him.  But then she had been quite firm in her purpose to give him no encouragement that she could avoid.  She had said no word that would justify him in considering that there was any engagement between them; and, moreover, he had been warned not to come to the house by its mistress.  From day to day he thought of it all, now telling himself that there was nothing to be done but to trust in her fidelity till he should be in a position to offer her a fitting home, and then reflecting that he could not expect such a girl as Nora Rowley to wait for him, unless he could succeed in making her understand that he at any rate intended to wait for her.  On one day he would think that good faith and proper consideration for Nora herself required him to keep silent; on the next he would tell himself that such maudlin chivalry as he was proposing to himself was sure to go to the wall and be neither rewarded nor recognised.  So at last he sat down and wrote the following letter: