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will you not, darling?" She laid her small hand on the girl's shoulder and looked down into the noble, troubled face pleadingly.

"I do not mind, of course, giving you a note that does not belong to me though it may be addressed to me," said Patricia, distressed, disturbed, uncertain. "But if Mr. Hamley or my aunt sees it, and asks who is my correspondent, what am I to say? You see I have no letters; and there is no one to write to me excepting Gordon; and I cannot hear from him yet for two months or more. So they will be sure to ask; and then what can I Say ?"

"Say? Anything! That it is from Miss Biggs, the dressmaker."

"I cannot do that," Patricia answered gravely. "I have never told a falsehood in my life, and even for you, Dora, much as I love you and much as I would do for you, I cannot begin now!"

"And how do you expect to get through the world, if you will not help a friend with a harmless little white lie like this ?" said Dora indignantly. "And you, who make so much fuss about your loving people so much, and your loyalty to them! It is perfect nonsense, Patricia, setting yourself up as so much better than any one else, and

pretending that you are too good to do the things we all have to do!"

"Don't be angry, Dora," said Patricia humbly. "There are very few things that I feel sure of now -fewer, a great deal, than I did three months ago! -but this I do know, that it is mean and cowardly to tell falsehoods for any purpose whatever. Even if I ought to hold my tongue, as you say I should, and let people think I agree with them when I do not, I am sure I ought not to say what is not true." "Then you will betray me ?-for the note will come!" said Dora, very pale.

"No, I will not betray you, Dora. I could not do that at any cost. But neither will I tell a falsehood to screen you, if there is anything you do not want known."

"Well, leave it to me, you tiresome girl!" said Dora after a moment's pause, and speaking more ill-temperedly than Patricia had imagined she could speak. "I shall know better than to trust to your friendship for me another time; but as I did trust you this time you must not tell of me, and I will do You have promised you will not

the best I can.

betray me?" earnestly.

"I will not," the girl answered, as if she had been taking an oath.

"Then I will trust to my own brains for the rest," laughed Dora; her good-humour returned with the scheme that had occurred to her, and, nodding to Patricia gaily, she slid out of the room and nearly ran against Bignold as she was leaving Mrs. Hamley for the night. If she had, that virtuous female would have told of her next day, and Aunt Hamley would have administered a lecture on collusion which would have had more words in it than meaning.

This night it was, when, safely locked in her own room, Dora indemnified herself for the suppressions and vexations of the day by crying a little when she got to bed, and saying half aloud, shaken with fear and repentance: "How I wish I had refused and never done it! It was too bad of him to make me, when he knew what was at stake!"

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CHAPTER XII.

HER FATHER'S FRIEND.

ΤΟ for me; one to you, Lady; none for you, Dora; and one for you, Patricia," said Mr. Hamley, dealing out the letters like cards the next morning at breakfast.

Patricia crimsoned with undisguised embarrassment as she received a letter written in a strange hand—a man's hand-with the local postmark on the cover. She said nothing, but quietly laid it beside her plate and began to eat her breakfast.

Her aunt looked at her sharply. It seemed strange to her, first, that Patricia should have a letter at all; next, that she should be so indifferent about reading it as not to open it, as any one else would have done; or if not indifferent, then so much the reverse as not to be able to look at it before other people. Who could be her correspondent? There was something here defying and mysterious; and

Mrs. Hamley never forgave either independence or mystery. People of arbitrary wills, and with a disposition to herd souls like sheep, seldom do.

This was one of the reasons why she liked dear Dora so much. She used to say when speaking of that young person, as she often did, and giving a reason for the faith that was in her, that dear Dora had not had a secret from her since she came under her roof; and had never been ashamed to give her the most minute and circumstantial account of every event in her innocent life. It was as good as being on the spot herself, Mrs. Hamley said, when Dora had been away for a day or two and came home with her budget. When she went to London last October, for instance, and stayed there for a week with the Borrodailes-Mrs. Hamley not being able to accompany her, owing to what she called a chilblain and her doctor gout her sprightly reminiscences were really amusement enough for weeks. She had kept a diary, dear child, on purpose to please them; and the care she had taken to put down everything she had seen and every place she had visited was beyond praise both for its cleverness and frankness. There was not an hour of her time that she could not account for; and how delightful it was to have to do with a person so thoroughly candid and trust

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