approaching departure from Cumberland would be powerless to snap
asunder--the doubt whether we any of us saw the end as the end
would really be--gathered more and more darkly over my mind.
Poignant as it was, the sense of suffering caused by the miserable
end of my brief, presumptuous love seemed to be blunted and
deadened by the still stronger sense of something obscurely
impending, something invisibly threatening, that Time was holding
over our heads.

I had been engaged with the drawings little more than half an
hour, when there was a knock at the door. It opened, on my
answering; and, to my surprise, Miss Halcombe entered the room.

Her manner was angry and agitated. She caught up a chair for
herself before I could give her one, and sat down in it, close at
my side.

"Mr. Hartright," she said, "I had hoped that all painful subjects
of conversation were exhausted between us, for to-day at least.
But it is not to be so. There is some underhand villainy at work
to frighten my sister about her approaching marriage. You saw me
send the gardener on to the house, with a letter addressed, in a
strange handwriting, to Miss Fairlie?"

"Certainly."

"The letter is an anonymous letter--a vile attempt to injure Sir
Percival Glyde in my sister's estimation. It has so agitated and
alarmed her that I have had the greatest possible difficulty in
composing her spirits sufficiently to allow me to leave her room