'But I am not sure that I ought to allow my name to be mentioned in your husband's letter.

Let me hear again exactly what he wishes to say.' Emily repeated the words--and then offered one of those suggestions, which have a special value of their own to persons unaccustomed to the use of their pens.

'Suppose you try, Miss, how it looks in writing ?' Childish as the idea was, Agnes tried the experiment.

'If I let you mention me,' she said, 'we must at least decide what you are to say.' She wrote the words in the briefest and plainest form:--'I venture to state that my wife has been known from her childhood to Miss Agnes Lockwood, who feels some little interest in my welfare on that account.' Reduced to this one sentence, there was surely nothing in the reference to her name which implied that Agnes had permitted it, or that she was even aware of it.

After a last struggle with herself, she handed the written paper to Emily.