Some weeks afterward I received the following letter from Mrs. Trevelyan: 

“My Dear Edgar—­Once again, I address you—­once again, setting pride and all things aside, I offer you Crown Anstey.  You have been away some time now, and know how different is your present hard life from the happy, luxurious one you led here.  Your engagement with Miss Thesiger is, of course, broken off.  I hear she has a wealthy suitor—­Lord Abberley.  It will be a good match for her.  Edgar, you will find no one in the world so true to you as myself.  See, I forgot all the past.  Once more I offer you my love, my hand, and with it, until my son is of age, Crown Anstey.  I never intended you to give it up as you have done.  I always wished to offer yourself and your sister an income sufficient for your maintenance.  I have not done so before because I hoped that poverty would seem so hateful to you you would gradually come to think better of my offer.  Is it so, Edgar?  Will you recognize my love, my fidelity, my devotion at last?  One word and all your troubles cease, you are back again in the beautiful old home, and I am happy.  Only one word.  From your ever loving, devoted

     Coralie.”

I need not repeat my answer.  It was, No!  I was no more free, no more inclined to return to Crown Anstey than I had been to remain there.

After that there was a long silence.  Agatha told me herself all about Lord Abberley; that he had been very kind to her, was very fond of her, but she had told him our story, and he had most generously forborne to press his suit.

Time was doing much for me; every hour was golden in its acquisition of blanks in my life were filled by books.  God sent every one the same comfort I had.

[Transcriber’s note:  One or more lines appear to be missing from the previous paragraph.]

CHAPTER XIV.

It was just three years since I had left Crown Anstey.  Lord Winter told me I should have some weeks to myself, but he was so incessantly occupied I never liked to ask for them.

I had never seen or heard anything of Crown Anstey since I left it.  At Harden Manor all was the same, unchanged and unaltered.

One morning, when I went into the library, a letter lay waiting for me.  I saw that it was Coralie’s handwriting, and my first impulse was to burn it unread.  Why should she write to me again?  Her letters only pained me.  I threw it aside and began to work—­in the busy occupation of the morning I forgot all about it.

I did not open it until evening.  It was from Coralie, but it only held these few words: 

     “Edgar—­My boy—­my beautiful boy—­is dying.  Come to me; for if I
     lose him I shall die, too.  In my distress I would rather have you
     near me than any one else.

     Coralie Trevelyan.”

Was it true, or was it an invention?  Poor little Rupert dying!  Why, no one had even told me he was ill.  Perhaps I had better go.  No mother could be so cold and so wicked as to feign death for her only child.