Vincent Lacour—now Sir Vincent—had a letter to answer. It was the end of May, and his time was much taken up. A young and handsome baronet, of manner which many people held fascinating, of curious originality in drawing-room conversation, possessed of a considerable fortune, and without encumbrances—it was natural that he should be in request when mornings were too short for the round of seasonable pleasures, and nights were melodious with the strains of Strauss and Waldteufel. For full four days he had postponed the answering of this particular letter, and mentally he characterised the neglect as disgraceful. However, a certain event had just come to pass, which made discharge of the duty imperative. He dined at his club, and there penned his reply. Afterwards he had a ball to go to.

It concerns us to know what he wrote:

“My dear Miss Warren,

“You will blame me for my delay in replying to your letter; I can only excuse myself by begging you to reflect how difficult it is to answer at all. I wrote to you for the last time five months ago, and you did not reply, or at all events no letter from you reached me. I put a certain interpretation upon your silence; that which, you must admit, your previous tone naturally suggested. I implore you not to misunderstand these words. I mean nothing less than an ungenerous reproach. No blame can possibly attach to you; circumstances alone have led us to the position we at present occupy with regard to each other. Circumstances have held us apart; must they part us finally?”

Vincent paused at this point: “I’m hanged if I couldn’t write a book,” he said to himself. “Well turned, those sentences, and they come so easy. I dare say the Amontillado has something to do with it.”

He proceeded:

“I can well understand a certain delicacy which has kept you silent so long; perhaps my last letter erred in the same direction, and you took for coldness what was merely an ill expression of my deep respect. You ask me now in what light I regard our relations to each other. Shall I answer that I have no will but yours, and that you have not mis-estimated me in conveying so delicately the wish you are too generous to express as a demand? Circumstances have treated us cruelly; to whom are not circumstances cruel at one time or another? Our misfortune is that they have declared themselves hostile in a matter of the gravest moment. Which of us could say what utterance on either side, what instant in our relations, had the influence we both feel to have been so fatal? My life has been an unhappy one; your letter makes it clear to me that I must go my way with one more sad, the saddest, memory. I cannot reproach myself; it is still less possible to reproach you. There is a fate in these things; you feel it yourself. I wish my loss were no heavier than your own. I never was worthy of you, and of that you must be conscious. I may have abilities, but they are very poor compared with yours, and, such as they are, I have made a poor use of them. That you should desire to be free from the bonds, which, you so nobly say, you still deem binding, is only natural; you deserve, and will win, devotion of a higher kind than my nature is capable of. In plain English, I am a sorry fellow. You know it. Let us say no more.”

At this point he made no internal comment, but hurried on to the end.

“Some day we shall, I trust, meet as friends; that is a privilege I shall covet. I am not incapable of appreciating high things, whether in character or in art. I think of you with reverence. Perhaps you will come to think, at all events, with tolerant kindness, of

“Yours very sincerely,

“Vincent Lacour.”

A couple of hours later he went to a ball given by his friends, the Hagworth Lewinsons, at their house in Cromwell Road. Mr. Lewin-son had formerly held a position in the Queensland Mint; he was now a member of Parliament, with a specialty in matters concerning currency, his own practical dealings therewith being on a substantial scale. He had one fair daughter and no more; Miss Lewinson was beautiful, and not more insipid than it generally falls to the lot of beautiful girls to be. To this young lady, Vincent Lacour had, a day or two ago, offered himself as a husband. To-night he appeared in the capacity of accepted suitor. Society inspected the two as they stood together, and discussed them with Society’s freedom; a coming marriage is so obviously a fit subject for light and frivolous chat. One circumstance was highly amusing; the bride-elect had a pronounced turn for jealousy, and did not conceal as well as she might have done, her anxiety to keep Sir Vincent well within view. There were not wanting ladies who remarked that Lady Lacour would have a busy time of it.

Vincent managed to sit out during one dance in which Miss Lewinson was engaged. He was looking rather absently at the couples when Mrs. Bruce Page placed herself beside him.

“Ah, you here?” he exclaimed, with something less than his usual politeness.

“Aren’t we going to be friends again?” said the vivacious lady, casting her eyes about her.

“I didn’t know we were anything else,” said Lacour drily.

“You always take it for granted that you are forgiven. And is this true that I hear?”

“You must hear so many things.”

“I do,” was the pithy reply. “But of course you know what I mean. When, pray, did you get rid of poor A. W.?”

The music was loud, but there were people sitting very near, and Mrs. Bruce Page had a habit of referring to her acquaintances thus cautiously. She allowed herself the solecism, as she allowed herself sundry other freedoms which had got her a worse name than she deserved.

“I don’t think we need talk of such things,” said Vincent coolly. “You are abundantly gifted with imagination. It will supply your needs in conversation for the next few days.”

“You are monstrously unkind,” she said, in a lower voice, and with a manner which would imply to observers that she was saying the most indifferent things. “If I liked to talk, now—but I won’t betray you. You might tell me all about it in return.”

“There is nothing to tell. Engagements are broken off every day.”

“True. A pity the practice isn’t more extensive. I suppose she got tired of you? You were too conceited for her?”

“We’ll say so,” conceded Vincent, more good-humouredly.

“Then it was her doing?”

“You are impertinent, but I don’t mind telling you that it was.”

“Oh, what a frank boy! There was no reason on your side for—drawing back a little, eh? waiting to see what time would bring, eh?”

“Your insinuations are best not understood.”

“It didn’t by chance occur to you that—let us say, that A. W. might not in the end prove what she seemed?”

Vincent looked at her out of the corners of his eyes.

“There was nobody, I suppose, interested in hinting that perhaps the will–? You understand?”

“Look here, what do you mean?” he asked, thoroughly roused.

“Nothing. I only thought that perhaps some one might, in some way or other—let us say by an anonymous letter–”

She was off to another part of the room before he could detain her, though he even clutched at her dress; her mocking laughter was quite distinct through the music.

“That woman’s the very devil!” was Sir Vincent’s muttered exclamation....

From the ball-room to the gardens and sunny glades of Knightswell. Ada went thither the day after she received Lacour’s letter, purposing a week of solitude. Mrs. Clarendon was tasting the sweets of the season in her wonted way, and the girl had Knightswell to herself. She enjoyed it. Up but little later than the sun, she went to see the rabbits at their dewy breakfast in the park, and to hear the thrushes pipe their mornings rapture. And she, too, sang out loud in the joy of her youth, and health, and freedom, in the delight of things achieved, and in glorious anticipation of effort that lay before her. Her spirits were as the weather, sunny, fresh, unclouded. Dark moods had fled from the strong and gracious presence which thrived in her heart. She knew delight. The current of her blood was for the time cool and even-flowing. Life would not bring her many days like these, so free from regret and from desire; that she knew well, and ate the golden fruit of the present with unabated joy.

There were changes in her face. The harshness of her features was softening by some mysterious outward working of the soul within. If she lived another five years, that which had made her plain by over-emphasis of individuality would have become the principle of a noble type of beauty. She was not unconscious of it, and it contributed to her energy of hope. Face would ally itself with form a her body had strength and graceful ease of motion; the moulding of her limbs was ideal. Every drop of the blood in her veins was charged with health. The physical sufferings which had formerly assailed her, she seemed to have outgrown. Passion slept, but only to arrise with new force; the heart would not always lie in subjection to the mind.

A walk one day brought her back from Salcot by the old road. When she came to the Cottage at Wood End, she paused to view it. A labourer’s family lived there now, and there were two children playing by the oak trunk. As she stood the cottage-door opened, and Mr. Vissian came forth.

He raised his eyes and saw her; she met him half-way, and greeted him with a frank friendliness which he did not look for.

“Mrs. Vissian and myself were about to call on you,” the rector said, with a little embarrassment. “I am rejoiced to see you looking so well, Miss Warren.”

“You have been making a pastoral visit?” Ada remarked, as they walked on together.

“Yes. I dare say I come here rather oftener than I should in the natural course of things, owing to my associations with the place. My good friend Kingcote used to live here. I believe you met him once or twice at Knightswell?”

“Oh yes, and in London, at a friend’s house.”

“It was a loss to me when he went away, a serious loss. I am doing my utmost to persuade him to come over and spend a week with me, but he won’t promise. We had a surprising similarity of tastes. He enjoyed the old dramatists, who, I think, you know are my favourite study.”

“Does he live in London?”

“No. In Norwich. It is his native town.”

Mr. Vissian, ever discreet, made no mention of his friend’s pursuits.

“Really, Miss Warren,” he continued, “you must allow me to tell you what pleasure you have been giving me of late. That story of yours in Roper s Miscellany is one of the most delightful things I have read for a long time. I don’t read modern fiction as a rule, but it is my hope that I may not miss anything you publish henceforth. I should not have seen this, I fear, but for my friend Kingcote. He sent me a copy of the magazine, and with it words of such strong commendation that I fell to at the feast forthwith.”

There was a glow of pleasure on the girl’s face; she said nothing, and looked away over the sunny meadows.

“There is an energy in your style,” pursued the rector, “which I relish exceedingly. Clearly you have drunk of the pure wells of English. Doubtless you read your Chaucer devoutly? A line of him has been ringing in my head for the last two days; no doubt you remember it, in the ‘Legende of Goode Women’—

‘And sworen on the blosmes to be trewe.’

One of the sweetest lines in all English poetry.”

He repeated it enthusiastically several times.

“Ah, Kingcote and I used to hunt up lines like that and revel over them! I have no one now with whom to talk in that way. He had a fine taste, a wonderful palate for pure literary flavour. His ear was finer than my own, much finer. He showed me metrical effects in Marlowe which I am ashamed to say I had utterly missed. There was one sonnet of old Drummond’s—Drummond of Hawthornden—that we relished together. Of course you know it well; the one beginning—

‘Lamp of heaven’s crystal hall that brings the hours.’

In it comes that phrase, ‘Apelles of the flowers.’ A grievous loss to me, an irreparable loss! I am engaged at present on an edition of Twelfth Night, in which, by-the-bye”—his eye twinkled—“I explain ‘the lady of the Strachy,’ I constantly miss Kingcote’s comments.”

Ada listened with thoughtful countenance.

“He ought to do something himself,” Mr. Vissian added, “but I fear his health is very bad. Last autumn he had a severe illness–”

“Last autumn?”

She interrupted involuntarily, and at once dismissed the curiosity which had risen to her face.

“Yes; I didn’t hear from him for a long time. He told me afterwards that he had beea at the point of death.”

“I hope you will let me have your Twelfth Night when it appears,” Ada said, after a short silence.

“With pleasure; if only you will promise to keep me apprised of your own publications. Ah me! how delightful it is to talk literature! I with difficulty part from you, Miss Warren; I could gossip through the day. If I only durst invite you in Mrs. Vissian’s name to take a cup of tea at the rectory this afternoon. It would be a charity. You have never seen my books, I believe; I have one or two things you would not disdain to look at; one or two first editions, among them a ‘Venice Preserved,’ which Kingcote gave me.”

“I will gladly come,” said Ada.

“Ah, you rejoice me! I shall go about my parish with the delight of anticipation.”

The tea-drinking duly took place. Mrs. Vissian was a little alarmed at the prospect of such a visitor, but went through the ceremony very well. The change in Ada surprised both the rector and his wife.

“I suppose it is the thought of coming into possession,” Mrs. Vissian said, when alone with her husband. “But really I don’t envy her. It ought to be very painful to her to take everything from poor Mrs. Clarendon.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” remarked the rector, “if Mrs. Clarendon lives at Knightswell just as before. Miss Warren cannot but insist upon it.”

“I couldn’t do that!” exclaimed Mrs. Vissian, shaking her head. “No, I’m sure it won’t be so. No woman who respects herself could submit to that.”

“But, my dear–”

“But what?”

“Ah, I really forgot what I was going to say; something about Mrs. Clarendon. Never mind.”

Returning to London by the first of June, Ada brought all her high spirits with her. With Rhoda and Hilda she was an affectionate sister, and outdid them both in mirthfulness. Rhoda had got over her long depression; she was in the habit of looking forward with a very carefully-concealed expectation to the not infrequent visits of a certain friend of her father’s, a gentleman of something less than forty, who was a widower, with one little boy of his own. This youngster occasionally accompanied his father, and received much affectionate attention from Rhoda; Hilda looked askance at the exhibition of his graces. The house in Chelsea had certainly a brighter air than of old.

On the evening of the day after her return, Ada went to walk by herself along the river. Hilda wished to accompany her, and was surprised by her friends request to be alone.

“Oh, you are thinking out another story,” Hilda exclaimed.

“Yes, I am; a very interesting one.”

Her face was very bright, but grave. She walked till the sun had set, watching the changing clouds and the gold on the river. On her way home, she paused a moment before each of the historic houses close at hand, and stood to look at the face of Thomas Carlyle, who had just been set up in effigy on the Embankment. At ten o’clock, when the sisters went up to bed, Ada knocked in her usual way at the door of Mr. Meres’ study.

Mr. Meres was reading; he welcomed her with a smile.

“Have you got Drummond’s poems?” she began by asking.

“Drummond of Hawthornden? Alas, no!”

“No matter. Mr. Vissian happened to mention him to me with some fervour.”

She was silent for a little, seemingly thinking of another matter. Then she said:

“Mr. Meres, I shall be one-and-twenty a fortnight to-day.”

“I know it, Ada.”

He watched her under his brows; she was smiling, with tremor of the lips.

“I went down to look at my property,” were her next words.

Mr. Meres made no answer.

“You will never, I fear, be able to congratulate me.”

He shifted on his chair, but still said nothing.

“And if you do not, who will?” pursued the girl. “I am afraid I shall be very friendless. Do you think it will be worth while to have a London house as well as Knights-well?”

“You will scarcely need one,” said the other, tapping his knee with a paper-knife, and speaking in rather a gruff voice.

“Some people in my position,” Ada went on, “would half wish that such wealth had never come to trouble them. They might be tempted to say they would have nothing to do with it.”

Mr. Meres raised his face.

“And so give much trouble,” he remarked, in a tone of suppressed agitation. “A state of things would follow equivalent to intestacy. Ten to one there would be law-suits. The property would be broken up.”

“Yes, I have thought of that,” Ada assented, looking up at the Madonna over the fireplace. “Still there would be a resource for such a person’s foolishness. There would be nothing to prevent him or her from giving it all away when once possessed of it.”

“Nothing in the world,” said Mr. Meres, scarcely above a whisper.

“Mr. Meres, will you help me to get that legally performed?”

He half rose, his hands trembling on the arms of his chair.

“Ada, you mean that?”

“Yes, I mean it.”

He caught her head between his hands, and kissed her several times on the forehead.

“That’s my brave girl!” was all he could say. Then he sat down again in the utmost perturbation. He was completely unnerved, and had to press his hands upon his brows to try and recover calm.

Ada kept her eyes upon Raphael’s Madonna. She could not see quite clearly, but the divine face was glowed around with halo, and seemed to smile.

“I cannot be quite independent, you know,” she said at length. “For the present I must ask Mrs. Clarendon to give me just what I need to live upon—that, and no more. I shall be glad to do that. I had rather have it from her as a gift than keep a sum for myself.”

“When did you first think of this?” Mr. Meres asked, when he could command his voice.

“I cannot tell you. I think the seed was in my mind long ago, and it has grown slowly.”

She spoke with much simplicity, and with natural earnestness.

“I never rejoiced in my future,” she continued, “unless, perhaps, in a few moments of misery. I never in earnest realised the possession of it. How could I? This wealth was not mine; a mere will could give me no right in it. I have often, in thinking over it, been brought to a kind of amazement at the unquestioning homage paid to arbitrary law. You know that mood in which simple, every-day matters are seen in their miraculous light. My whole self revolted against such laws. It seemed a kind of conjuring with human lives—something basely ludicrous. And the surrender costs me nothing; I assure you it costs me nothing! To say there was merit in it would be ridiculous. I simply could not accept what is offered me. Oh, how light I feel!”

Meres looked at her admiringly.

“And to consent to be the instrument of a dead mans malice!” Her scorn was passionate. “Isn’t it enough to think of that? What did he care for me, a wretched, parentless child, put out to nurse with working-people! It was baser cruelty to me than to Mrs. Clarendon. Oh, how did she consent to be rich on those terms?”

“Ada, you must try and think tenderly of her,” said Meres, with the softness which always marked his voice when he spoke of Isabel. “I have told you of her early poverty. She was a beautiful girl, and without the education which might have given her high aims; the pleasant things of the world tempted her, and frivolous society did its best to ruin her. It did not touch her heart; that has always been pure, and generous, and womanly. Try never to think of her failings.”

“I wish I were not a woman!” Ada exclaimed. “It is that which makes me judge her hardly. Men—all men—see her so differently.”

“Ada Warren!” he grasped the arm of his chair convulsively, speaking in sudden forgetfulness of everything but his passion, “if by my death I could save her from the most trifling pain I would gladly die this hour!”

She gazed at him with a daughters tenderness, and sighed:

“I shall never hear such words as those.”

“My child, your reward is in the future. Fate has given you nobility alike of heart and brain, and, if you live, you will lack no happiness that time has in its bestowal. Go, now, Ada, and leave me to myself. This hour has made me feel old. My quiet life does not fit me for these scenes. I am horribly shaken.”

She rose, and bent her head that again he might kiss her on the brows.

“You shall be my father,” she said, her voice faltering. “May I call you father from now?”

He turned from her, pressing her hand, and she left him.