On that evening she received from him a long letter, written at the neighboring inn, expostulating with her as to her conduct toward him, and saying in the last line, that it was "impossible now that they should be strangers to each other." "Impossible that we should be strangers," she said almost out aloud.

"Why impossible?
I know no such impossibility." After that she carefully burned both the letter and the note.
She remained at Ongar Park something over six weeks, and then, about the beginning of May, she went back to London.

No one had been to see her, except Mr.Sturm, the clergyman of the parish; and he, though something almost approaching to an intimacy had sprung up between them, had never yet spoken to her of his wife.

She was not quite sure whether her rank might not deter him--whether under such circumstances as those now in question, the ordinary social rules were not ordinarily broken--whether a countess should not call on a clergyman's wife first, although the countess might be the stranger; but she did not dare to do as she would have done, had no blight attached itself to her name.

She gave, therefore, no hint; she said no word of Mrs.Sturm, though her heart was longing for a kind word from some woman's mouth.