to come here, I should be only too glad to go to Highbury, if only for one word.  We have got some mourning dresses to make for the servants of a lady in Islington, so that is good news.  But poor Jane is very bad indeed.  She suffers a great deal of pain, and most of all at night, so that she scarcely ever gets more than half-an-hour of sleep at a time, if that.  What makes it worse, dear Richard, is that she is so very unhappy.  Sometimes she cries nearly through the whole night.  I try my best to keep her up, but I’m afraid her weakness has much to do with it.  But Kate is very well, I am glad to say, and the children are very well too.  Bertie is beginning to learn to read.  He often says he would like to see you.  Thank you, dearest, for the money and all your kindness, and believe that I shall think of you every minute with much love.  From yours ever and ever,

‘EMMA VINE.’

It would be cruel to reproduce Emma’s errors of spelling.  Richard had sometimes noted a bad instance with annoyance, but it was not that which made him hurry to the end this morning with lowered brows.  When he had finished the letter he crumbled it up and threw it into the fire.  It was not heartlessness that made him do so:  he dreaded to have these letters brought before his eyes a second time.

He was also throwing the envelope aside, when he discovered that it contained yet another slip of paper.  The writing on this was not Emma’s:  the letters were cramped and not easy to decipher.

’Dear Richard, come to London and see me.  I want to speak to you, I must speak to you.  I can’t have very long to live, and I must, must see you.

‘JANE VINE.’

This too he threw into the fire.  His lips were hard set, his eyes wide.  And almost immediately he prepared to leave the house.

It was early, but he felt that he must go to the Walthams’.  He had promised Mrs. Waltham to refrain from visiting the house for a week, but that promise it was impossible to keep.  Jane’s words were ringing in his ears:  he seemed to hear her very voice calling and beseeching.  So far from changing his purpose, it impelled him in the course he had chosen.  There must and should be an end of this suspense.

Mrs. Waltham had just come downstairs from her conversation with Adela, when she saw Mutimer approaching the door.  She admitted him herself.  Surely Providence was on her side; she felt almost young in her satisfaction.

Richard remained in the house about twenty minutes.  Then he walked down to the works as usual.

Shortly after his departure another visitor presented himself.  This was Mr. Wyvern.  The vicar’s walk in Hubert’s company the evening before had extended itself from point to point, till the two reached Agworth together.  Mr. Wyvern was addicted to night-rambling, and he often covered considerable stretches of country in the hours when other mortals slept.  To-night he was in the mood for such exercise; it worked off unwholesome accumulations of thought and feeling, and good counsel often came to him in what the Greeks called the kindly time.  He did not hurry on his way back to Wanley, for just at present he was much in need of calm reflection.