“But so it is, I am driven to look about for myself.  It is very hard at my time of life to find an opening in any profession.  I think I told you before that I had ideas of going to Cambridge and endeavoring to get pupils, trusting to my fellowship rather than to my acquirements.  But this I have always looked upon with great dislike, and would only have taken to it if nothing else was to be had.  Now there has come forward an old college acquaintance, a man who is three or four years my senior, who has offered to take me to America as his private secretary.  He proposes to remain there for three years.  I of course shall not bind myself to stay as long; but I may not improbably do so.  He is to pay my expenses and to give me a salary of three hundred a year.  This will, perhaps, lead to nothing else, but will for the present be better than nothing.  I am to start in just a month from the present time.

“Now you know it all except that the man’s name is Sir William Crook.  He is a decent sort of a fellow, and has got a wife who is to go with him.  He is the hardest working man I know, but, between you and me, will never set the Thames on fire.  If the Thames is to be illumined at all, I rather think that I shall be expected to do it.

“Now, my own one, what am I to say about you, and of myself, as your husband that is to be?  Will you wait, at any rate, for three years with the conviction that the three years will too probably end in your having to wait again?

“I do feel that in my altered position I ought to give you back your troth, and tell you that things shall be as they used to be before that happy night at Mrs. Armitage’s party.  I do not know but that it is clearly my duty.  I almost think that it is.  But I am sure of this,—­that it is the one thing in the world that I cannot do.  I don’t think that a man ought to be asked to tear himself altogether in pieces because some one has ill-treated him.  At any rate I cannot.  If you say that it must be so, you shall say it.  I don’t suppose it will kill me, but it will go a long way.

“In writing so far I have not said a word of love, because, as far as I understand you, that is a subject on which you expect me to be silent.  When you order me not to write, I suppose you intend that I am to write no love-letters.  This, therefore, you will take simply as a matter of business, and as such, I suppose, you will acknowledge it.  In this way I shall at any rate see your handwriting.

“Yours affectionately,

“HARRY ANNESLEY.”

Harry, when he had written this letter, considered that it had been cold, calm, and philosophical.  He could not go to America for three years without telling her of his purpose; nor could he mention that purpose, as he thought, in any language less glowing.  But Florence, when she received it, did not regard it in the same light.