You know that I became engaged to Miss Burton soon after your own marriage.  I feel now that I should have told you this when we first met; but yet, had I done so, it would have seemed as though I told it with a special object.  I don’t know whether I make myself understood in this.  I can only hope that I do so.

Understood!  Of course she understood it all.  She required no blundering explanation from him to assist her intelligence.

    I wish now that I had mentioned it.  It would have been better for
    both of us.  I should have been saved much pain, and you, perhaps,
    some uneasiness.

I was called down to Clavering a few weeks ago about some business in the family, and then became ill, so that I was confined to my bed instead of returning to town.  Had it not been for this I should not have left you so long in suspense—­that is, if there has been suspense.  For myself, I have to own that I have been very weak—­worse than weak, I fear you will think.  I do not know whether your old regard for me will prompt you to make any excuse for me, but I am well sure that I can make none for myself which will not have suggested itself to you without my urging it.  If you choose to think that I have been heartless—­or, rather, if you are able so to think of me, no words of mine, written or spoken now, will remove that impression from your mind.

I believe that I need write nothing further.  You will understand from what I have said all that I should have to say were I to refer at length to that which has passed between us.  All that is over now, and it only remains for me to express a hope that you may be happy.  Whether we shall ever see each other again, who shall say? but if we do I trust that we may not meet as enemies.  May God bless you here and hereafter.

    Harry Clavering

When the letter was finished, Harry sat for a while by his open window looking at the moon, over the chimney-pots of his square, and thinking of his career in life as it had hitherto been fulfilled.  The great promise of his earlier days had not been kept.  His plight in the world was now poor enough, though his hopes had been so high.  He was engaged to be married, but had no income on which to marry.  He had narrowly escaped great wealth.  Ah! it was hard for him to think of that without a regret; but he did strive so to think of it.  Though he told himself that it would have been evil for him to have depended on money which had been procured by the very act which had been to him an injury—­to have dressed himself in the feathers which had been plucked from Lord Ongar’s wings—­it was hard for him to think of all he had missed, and rejoice thoroughly that he had missed it.  But he told himself that he so rejoiced, and endeavored to be glad that he had not soiled his hands with riches which never would have belonged to the woman he had loved had she not earner them by being false to him.  Early on the following morning he sent off his letter, and then, putting himself into a cab, bowled down to Onslow Crescent.  The sheepfold was now very pleasant to him when the head shepherd was away, and so much gratification it was natural that he should allow himself.