“Had you not been ill, every thing would of course have been all right before now.”  As to the correctness of this assertion the reader probably will have doubts of his own.  Then she handed him the letter, and sat on his bedside while he read it.  At first he was startled, and made almost indignant at the firmness of the girl’s words.  She gave him up as though it were a thing quite decided, and uttered no expression of her own regret in doing so.  There was no soft woman’s wail in her words.  But there was in them something which made him unconsciously long to get back the thing which he had so nearly thrown away from him.  They inspired him with a doubt whether he might yet succeed, which very doubt greatly increased his desire.  As he read the letter for the second time, Julia became less beautiful in his imagination; and the charm of Florence’s character became stronger.

“Well, dear,” said his mother, when she saw that he had finished the second reading of the epistle.

He hardly knew how to express, even to his mother, all his feelings—­the shame that he felt, and with the shame something of indignation that he should have been so repulsed.  And of his love, too, he was afraid to speak.  He was willing enough to give the required assurance, but after that he would have preferred to have been left alone.  But his mother could not leave him without some further word of agreement between them as to the course which they would pursue.

“Will you write to her, mother, or shall I?”

“I shall write, certainly—­by to-day’s post.  I would not leave her an hour, if I could help it, without an assurance of your unaltered affection.”

“I could go to town to-morrow, mother—­could I not?”

“Not to-morrow, Harry.  It would be foolish.  Say on Monday.”

“And you will write to-day?”

“Certainly.”

“I will send a line also—­just a line.”

“And the parcel?”

“I have not opened it yet.”

“You know what it contains.  Send it back at once, Harry—­at once.  If I understand her feelings, she will not be happy till she gets it into her hands again.  We will send Jem over to the post-office, and have it registered.”

When so much was settled, Mrs. Clavering went away about the affairs of her house, thinking as she did so of the loving words with which she would strive to give back happiness to Florence Burton.

Harry, when he was alone, slowly opened the parcel.  He could not resist the temptation of doing this, and of looking again at the things which she had sent back to him.  And he was not without an idea—­perhaps a hope—­that there might be with them some short note—­some scrap containing a few words for himself.  If he had any such hope he was disappointed.  There were his own letters, all scented with lavender from the casket in which they had been preserved; there was the rich bracelet which had been given with some little ceremony, and