Can I ever tell in words how kindly Lady Thesiger received her?  True friends, they took no note of altered fortunes.  My sister was comfortably installed in the charming rooms they had prepared for her.  Her favorite maid was to stay with her.

Then came the agony I had long known must come.  I must give up Agatha.  How could I, who had not one shilling in my pocket, marry the daughter of Sir John Thesiger, a girl, delicate and refined, who had been brought up in all imaginable luxury?  Let me work hard as I might, I could hardly hope to make two hundred a year.  In all honor and in all conscience I was bound to give her up.

I had no prospect before me save that of returning to my former position as clerk.  Agatha Thesiger must never be a clerk’s wife, she who could marry any peer in the land!

Talk of waiting and hoping!  I had nothing to hope for.  The savings of my whole life would not keep her, as she had been kept, for even one year.

I must give her up.  Ah, my God!  It was hard—­so bitterly hard!  I told Sir John, and he looked wretched as myself.

“I see, I see.  It is the only thing to be done.  If I could give her a fortune you should not lose her; but I cannot, and she must not come to poverty.”

Lady Thesiger wept bitterly over me.

“I foresaw it from the first,” she said.  “I knew it was not the loss of Crown Anstey, but the loss of Agatha, that would be your sorest trial.”

Then I said “good-by” to her whom I had hoped so soon to call my wife.  I kissed her white face and trembling hands for the last time.

But the dear soul clung to me, weeping.

“You may say you must leave me a thousand times, Edgar, but I shall never be left.  I shall wait for you; and if it be never in your power to claim me, I shall marry no other man.  I will be yours in death as in life.”

And though I tried to shake her resolution, I knew that it would be so.  I knew that no other man would ever call her wife.

The day before I left, Mrs. Trevelyan, with her little Sir Rupert, took possession of the Hall.  She must have found many thorns in her path, for, although she had attained her heart’s desire, and was now mistress of Crown Anstey, she was shunned and disliked by all the neighborhood.

“An adventuress,” they called her, and as such refused to receive her into their society.  Perhaps she had foreseen this when she wished to marry me.

By Sir John’s influence, the post of secretary was found for me with an English nobleman residing in Paris.  I was to live in the house; my duties were sufficiently onerous, and I was to receive a salary of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum; so that, after all, I was better off than I had once expected to be.

I bade farewell to Agatha, to Clare, to my kind friends Sir John and Lady Thesiger.  God knew the grief that filled my heart; I cannot describe it.