He had really a tender regard for the country girl, and it grew more tender than ever when he found her apparently capable of expressing the deepest sensibilities in the simplest words.

He meditated, he wavered; and finally resolved to consult his sister, a maiden 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 innate.' 'Yes.

She writes very prettily, doesn't she, thanks to these elementary schools ?' 'One is drawn 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 looming 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.