The letter moved Raye when it reached him.  The intelligence itself had him less than her unexpected manner of treating him in relation to it.  The absence of any word of reproach, the devotion to his interests, the self-sacrifice apparent in every line, all made up a nobility of character that he had never dreamt of finding in womankind.  
‘God forgive me!’ he said tremulously.  ‘I have been a wicked .  I did not know she was such a treasure as this!’
 
He her instantly; declaring that he would not of course desert her, that he would provide a home for her somewhere.  Meanwhile she was to stay where she was as long as her mistress would allow her.
 
But a misfortune supervened in this direction.  Whether an inkling of Anna’s circumstances reached the knowledge of Mrs. Harnham’s husband or not cannot be said, but the girl was compelled, in spite of Edith’s , to leave the house.  By her own choice she to go back for a while to the cottage on the Plain.  This arrangement led to a as to how the correspondence should be carried on; and in the girl’s inability to continue personally what had been begun in her name, and in the difficulty of their in concert as heretofore, she requested Mrs. Harnham—the only well-to-do friend she had in the world—to receive the letters and reply to them off-hand, sending them on afterwards to herself on the Plain, where she might at least get some neighbour to read them to her, if a trustworthy one could be met with.  Anna and her box then departed for the Plain.
 
Thus it befel that Edith Harnham found herself in the strange position of having to correspond, under no by the real woman, with a man not her husband, in terms which were virtually those of a wife, concerning a condition that was not Edith’s at all; the man being one for whom, mainly through the sympathies involved in playing this part, she secretly cherished a , subtle and imaginative truly, but strong and absorbing.  She opened each letter, read it as if intended for herself, and replied from the promptings of her own heart and no other.
 
Throughout this correspondence, carried on in the girl’s absence, the high-strung Edith Harnham lived in the of fancy; the vicarious such a flow of as was never exceeded.  For conscience’ sake Edith at first sent on each of his letters to Anna, and even rough copies of her replies; but later on these so-called copies were much , and many letters on both sides were not sent on at all.
 
Though selfish, and, superficially at least, with the self-indulgent of artificial society, there was a substratum of honesty and fairness in Raye’s character.  He had really a tender regard for the country girl, and it grew more tender than ever when he found her capable of expressing the deepest sensibilities in the simplest words.  He , he wavered; and finally resolved to consult his sister, a lady much older than himself, of lively sympathies and good intent.  In making this confidence he showed her some of the letters.
 
‘She seems fairly educated,’ Miss Raye observed.  ‘And bright in ideas.  She expresses herself with a taste that must be .’
 
‘Yes.  She writes very , doesn’t she, thanks to these elementary schools?’
 
‘One is out towards her, in spite of one’s self, poor thing.’
 
The upshot of the discussion was that though he had not been directly advised to do it, Raye wrote, in his real name, what he would never have decided to write on his own responsibility; namely that he could not live without her, and would come down in the spring and shelve her difficulty by marrying her.
 
This bold acceptance of the situation was made known to Anna by Mrs. Harnham driving out immediately to the cottage on the Plain.  Anna jumped fo............