She had learned to laugh at romance, but still she believed in love.  While that bargain was going on as to her settlement, she had laughed at romance, and had told herself that in this world worldly prosperity was everything.  Sir Hugh then had stood by her with truth, for he had well understood the matter, and could enter into it with zest.  Lord Ongar, in his state of health, had not been in a position to make close stipulations as to the dower in the event of his proposed wife becoming a widow.  “No, no; we wont stand that,” Sir Hugh had said to the lawyers.  “We all hope, of course, that Lord Ongar may live long; no doubt he’ll turn over a new leaf and die at ninety.  But in such a case as this the widow must not be fettered.”  The widow had not been fettered, and Julia had been made to understand the full advantage of such an arrangement.  But still she had believed in love when she had bade farewell to Harry in the garden.  She had told herself then, even then, that she would have better liked to have taken him and his love—­if only she could have afforded it.  He had not dreamed that in leaving him she had gone from him to her room, and taken out his picture—­the same that she had with her now in Bolton Street—­and had kissed it, bidding him farewell there with a passion which she could not display in his presence.  And she had thought of his offer about the money over and over again.  “Yes,” she would say, “that man loved me.  He would have given me all he had to relieve me, though nothing was to come to him in return.”  She had, at any rate been loved once; and she almost wished that she had taken the money, that she might now have an opportunity of repaying it.

And she was again free, and her old lover was again by her side.  Had that fatal episode in her life been so fatal that she must now regard herself as tainted and unfit for him?  There was no longer anything to separate them—­anything of which she was aware, unless it was that.  And as for his love—­did he not look and speak as though he loved her still?  Had he not pressed her hand passionately, and kissed it, and once more called her Julia?  How should it be that he should not love her?  In such a case as his, love might have been turned to hatred or to enmity; but it was not so with him.  He called himself her friend.  How could there be friendship between them without love?

And then she thought how much with her wealth she might do for him.  With all his early studies and his talent, Harry Clavering was not the man, she thought, to make his way in the world by hard work; but with such an income as she could give him, he might shine among the proud ones of his nation.  He should go into Parliament, and do great things.  He should be lord of all.  It should all be his without a word of reserve.  She had been mercenary once, but she would atone for that now by open-handed, undoubting generosity.  She herself had learned to hate the house and fields and widespread comforts