be given to him.  How was it that Florence had brought with her all his presents and all his letters?  But there they were in her box up stairs, and sitting by herself with weary fingers, she packed them, and left them packed under lock and key, addressed by herself to Harry Clavering, Esq.  Oh, the misery of packing such a parcel!  The feeling with which a woman does it is never experienced by a man.  He chucks the things together in wrath—­the lock of hair, the letters in the pretty Italian hand that have taken so much happy care in the writing, the jewelled shirt-studs, which were first put in by the fingers that gave them.  They are thrown together, and given to some other woman to deliver.  But the girl lingers over her torture.  She reads the letters again.  She thinks of the moments of bliss which each little toy has given.  She is loth to part with everything.  She would fain keep some one thing—­the smallest of them all.  She doubts—­till a feeling of maidenly reserve constrains her at last, and the coveted trifle, with careful, pains-taking fingers, is put with the rest, and the parcel is made complete, and the address is written with precision.

“Of course I cannot see him,” said Florence.  “You will hand to him what I have to send to him; and you must ask him, if he has kept any of my letters, to return them.”  She said nothing of the shirt-studs, but he would understand that.  As for the lock of hair—­doubtless it had been burned.

Cecilia said but little in answer to this.  She would not as yet look upon the matter as Florence looked at it, and as Theodore did also.  Harry was to be back in town on Thursday morning.  He could not, probably, be seen or heard of on that day, because of his visit to Lady Ongar.  It was absolutely necessary that he should see Lady Ongar before he could come to Onslow Terrace, with possibility of becoming once more the old Harry Clavering whom they were all to love.  But Mrs. Burton would by no means give up all hope.  It was useless to say anything to Florence, but she still hoped that good might come.

And then, as she thought of it all, a project came into her head.  Alas, and alas!  Was she not too late with her project?  Why had she not thought of it on the Tuesday or early on the Wednesday, when it might possibly have been executed?  But it was a project which she must have kept secret from her husband, of which he would by no means have approved; and as she remembered this, she told herself that perhaps it was as well that things should take their own course without such interference as she had contemplated.

On the Thursday morning there came to her a letter in a strange hand.  It was from Clavering—­from Harry’s mother.  Mrs. Clavering wrote, as she said, at her son’s request, to say that he was confined to his bed, and could not be in London as soon as he expected.  Mrs. Burton was not to suppose that he was really ill, and none of the family were to be frightened.  From this Mrs. Burton learned that Mrs. Clavering knew nothing of Harry’s apostasy.  The letter went on to say that Harry would write as soon as he himself was able, and would probably be in London early next week—­at any rate before the end of it.  He was a little feverish, but there was no cause for alarm.  Florence, of course, could only listen and turn pale.  Now, at any rate, she must remain in London.