So to Bristol he betook himself, and there made his temporary abode.  After spending a few weeks in fruitless search for an engagement, he at length paid his oft-postponed visit to Twybridge.  In the old home he felt completely a stranger, and his relatives strengthened the feeling by declaring him so changed in appearance that they hardly knew his face.  With his mother only could he talk in anything like an intimate way, and the falsehoods with which he was obliged to answer her questions all but destroyed the pleasure he would otherwise have found in being affectionately tended.  His sister, Mrs Cusse, was happy in her husband, her children, and a flourishing business.  Oliver was making money, and enjoyed distinction among the shopkeeping community.  His aunt still dealt in millinery, and kept up her acquaintance with respectable families.  To Godwin all was like a dream dreamt for the second time.  He could not acknowledge any actual connection between these people and himself.  But their characteristics no longer gravely offended him, and he willingly recognised the homespun worth which their lives displayed.  It was clear to him that by no possible agency of circumstances could he have been held in normal relations with his kinsfolk.  However smooth his career, it must have wafted him to an immeasurable distance from Twybridge.  Nature had decreed that he was to resemble the animals which, once reared, go forth in complete independence of birthplace and the ties of blood.  It was a harsh fate, but in what had not fate been harsh to him?  The one consolation was that he alone suffered.  His mother was no doubt occasionally troubled by solicitude on his account, but she could not divine his inward miseries, and an assurance that he had no material cares sufficed to set her mind at ease.

‘You are very like your father, Godwin,’ she said, with a sigh.  ’He couldn’t rest, however well he seemed to be getting on.  There was always something he wanted, and yet he didn’t know what it was.’

‘Yes, I must be like him,’ Godwin replied, smiling.

He stayed five days, then returned to Bristol.  A week after that, his mother forwarded to him a letter which had come to Twybridge.  He at once recognised the writing, and broke the envelope with curiosity.

’If you should be in London [the note began], I beg you to let me see you.  There is something I have to say.  To speak to you for a few minutes I would come any distance.  Don’t accuse me of behaving treacherously; it was not my fault.  I know you would rather avoid me, but do consent to hear what I have to say.  If you have no intention of coming to London, will you write and let me know where you are living?

What could Marcella have to say to him?  Nothing surely that he at all cared to hear.  No doubt she imagined that he might be in ignorance of the circumstances which had led to Buckland Warricombe’s discovery; she wished to defend herself against the suspicion of ‘treachery’.  He laughed carelessly, and threw her note aside.