Then when her bell rang, Jane went up to her room, and found her so pale and haggard that she was frightened.  She had thrown herself back on the couch, with her hands lying by her sides, as if she cared for nothing in this world or out of it.  But when Jane entered, she started and sat up, and tried to look like herself.  Her face, however, was so pitiful, that honest-hearted Jane could not help crying, upon which the responsive sisterhood overcame the proud lady, and she cried too.  Jane had all but forgotten the letter, of the import of which she had no idea, for her father had taken care to rouse no suspicions in her mind.  But when she saw her cry, the longing to give her something, which comes to us all when we witness trouble—­for giving seems to mean everything-brought to her mind the letter she had undertaken to deliver to her.  Now she had no notion, as I have said, that the letter had anything to do with her present perplexity, but she hoped it might divert her thoughts for a moment, which is all that love at a distance can look for sometimes.

“Here is a letter,” said Jane, “that Mr Weir the carpenter gave to my father to give to me to bring to you, miss.”

“What is it about, Jane?” she asked listlessly.

Then a sudden flash broke from her eyes, and she held out her hand eagerly to take it.  She opened it and read it with changing colour, but when she had finished it, her cheeks were crimson, and her eyes glowing like fire.

“The wretch,” she said, and threw the letter from her into the middle of the floor.

Jane, who remembered the injunctions of her father as to the safety and return of the letter, stooped to pick it up:  but had hardly raised herself when the door opened, and in came Mrs Oldcastle.  The moment she saw her mother, Ethelwyn rose, and advancing to meet her, said,

“Mother, I will not marry that man.  You may do what you please with me, but I will not.”

“Heigho!” exclaimed Mrs Oldcastle with spread nostrils, and turning suddenly upon Jane, snatched the letter out of her hand.

She opened and read it, her face getting more still and stony as she read.  Miss Oldcastle stood and looked at her mother with cheeks now pale but with still flashing eyes.  The moment her mother had finished the letter, she walked swiftly to the fire, tearing the letter as she went, and thrust it between the bars, pushing it in fiercely with the poker, and muttering—­

“A vile forgery of those low Chartist wretches!  As if he would ever have looked at one of their women!  A low conspiracy to get money from a gentleman in his honourable position!”

And for the first time since she went to the Hall, Jane said, there was colour in that dead white face.

She turned once more, fiercer than ever, upon Jane, and in a tone of rage under powerful repression, began:—­

“You leave the house—­this instant.”