Why am I separated from my Julie but for him?  Well, I can go away, and in my own countries there are those who will not wish to be separated from Sophie Gordeloup.

May I now tell my Julie in what condition is her poor friend?  She will remember how it was that my feet brought me to England—­to England, to which I had said farewell forever—­to England, where people must be rich like my Julie before they can eat and drink.  I thought nothing then but of my Julie.  I stopped not on the road to make merchandise—­what you call a bargain—­about my coming.  No; I came at once, leaving all things—­my little affairs—­in confusion, because my Julie wanted me to come!  It was in the Winter.  Oh, that Winter!  My poor bones shall never forget it.  They are racked still with the pains which your savage winds have given them.  And now it is Autumn.  Ten months have I been here, and I have eaten up my little substance.  Oh, Julie, you, who are so rich, do not know what is the poverty of your Sophie!

A lawyer have told me—­not a French lawyer, but an English—­that somebody should pay me everything.  He says the law would give it me.  He have offered me the money himself, just to let him make an action.  But I have said no.  No, Sophie will not have an action with her Julie.  She would scorn that; and so the lawyer went away.  But if my Julie will think of this, and will remember her Sophie—­how much she have expended, and now at last there is nothing left.  She must go and beg among her friends.  And why?  Because she have loved her Julie too well.  You, who are so rich, would miss it not at all.  What would two-three hundred pounds be to my Julie?

Shall I come to you?  Say so; say so, and I will go at once, if I did crawl on my knees.  Oh, what a joy to see my Julie!  And do not think I will trouble you about money.  No, your Sophie will be too proud for that.  Not a word will I say but to love you.  Nothing will I do but to print one kiss on my Julie’s forehead, and then to retire forever, asking God’s blessing for her dear head.

    Thine-always thine,

    Sophie.

Lady Ongar, when she received this letter, was a little perplexed by it, not feeling quite sure in what way she might best answer it.  It was the special severity of her position that there was no one to whom, in such difficulties, she could apply for advice.  Of one thing she was quite sure—­that, willingly, she would never again see her devoted Sophie.  And she knew that the woman deserved no money from her; that she had deserved none, but had received much.  Every assertion in her letter was false.  No one had wished her to come, and the expense of her coming had been paid for her over and over again.  Lady Ongar knew that she had money, and knew also that she would have had immediate recourse to law if any lawyer would have suggested to her, with a probability of success, that he could get more for her.  No doubt she had been telling her story to some attorney, in the hope that money might thus he extracted, and had been dragging her Julie’s name through the mud, telling all she knew of that wretched Florentine story.  As to all that Lady Ongar had no doubt, and yet she wished to send the woman money!