If Valentine’s death in early youth had been but a remote contingency, the matter could have been very easily discussed, but hour by hour John Mortimer felt less assured that the poor young fellow’s own hopeful view was the true one.

Valentine had extended himself again on the sofa.  “I want you presently to read some letters,” he said; “they are in that desk, standing before you.”

John opened it, and in the act of turning it towards him his eyes wandered to the garden, and then to the lovely country beyond; they seemed for the moment to be arrested by its beauty, and his hand paused.

“What a landscape!” he said, “and how you have improved the place, Val!  I did not half do it justice the last time I came here.”

“I hate it,” said Valentine with irritation, “and everything belonging to it.”

John looked at him with scarcely any surprise.

“That is only because you have got out of health since you came here; you have not been able to enjoy life.  But you are better, you know.  You are assured that you have good hope of coming back recovered.  I devoutly trust you may.  Forget any morbid feelings that may have oppressed you.  The place is not to blame.  Well, and these letters—­I only see two.  Are they all?”

“Yes.  But, John, you can see that I am not very strong.”

“Yes, indeed,” said John with an involuntary sigh.

“Well, then, I want you to be considerate.  I mean,” he added, when he perceived that he had now considerably astonished John Mortimer—­“I mean that when you have read them.  I want you to take some little time to think before you speak to me at all.”

“Why, this is in my uncle’s handwriting!” exclaimed John.

“Yes,” answered Valentine, and he turned away as he still reclined, that he might not see the reader, “so it is.”

Silence then—­silence for a longer time than it could have taken to read that letter.  Valentine heard deep breathing from time to time, and the rustling of pages turned and turned again.  At last, when there was still silence, he moved on the sofa and looked at his cousin.

John was astonished, as was evident, and mystified; but more than that, he was indignant and exceedingly alarmed.

Valentine had asked him to be considerate.  His temper was slightly hasty; but he was bearing the request in mind, and controlling it, though his heightened colour and flashing eyes showed that he suffered keenly from a baffling sense of shame and impending disgrace.  These feelings, however, were subsiding, and as they retired his astonishment seemed to grow, and his hand trembled when he folded up the letter for the last time and laid it down.

He took up the second letter, which was addressed to his grandmother, and read it through.

It set forth that the writer, Cuthbert Melcombe, being then in London, had heard that morning the particulars of his young uncle’s death at sea, had heard it from one of the young man’s brother officers, and felt that he ought to detail them to his mother; he then went on to relate certain commonplace incidents of a lingering illness and death at sea.