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xii As it was, I wrote a note to "Sadie," addressed it to Messrs. Routledge and Co., the publishers of the little book, and within a few days there came an answer, telling me who she was. Some sixteen years ago she, as Sarah Williams, had been a pupil at the College (I lighted on the name by a strange chance in a faint, half-obliterated pencil class-list, within a week of this renewed acquaintance): she had left it in consequence of illness, had gone on reading and thinking for herself in a desultory kind of way, coming very little in contact with what is called " society," under the influence, as far as her inner life was concerned, of "pious stragglers from the Church," but not imbued in any degree with the antagonism of Nonconformity, nor even with its characteristic theology.

There had been nothing eventful in her life so far. The birth of "Rainbows in Springtide" had been the first interruption to the calm tenor of a London home, broken only by visits to Wales or Ramsgate, or the rarer treat of Paris. There was as little in the way of incident in the period — all too short — that followed. An introduction to Mr. Strahan gained for her admission to the magazines which issued from his house, — " Good Words," the " Sunday Magazine," and the "Argosy," — and the career of an authoress, more or less