I hardly venture to hope that you will give your consent.

If you do, I will thank you for it.

If you should think it best to refuse it, I submit humbly as I submit now.

Let me add that I would not ask the favor but that my health and strength are failing fast." Lord Arleigh mused long and anxiously over this letter.

He hardly cared that her mother should go to Dower House; it would perhaps be the means of his unhappy secret becoming known.