"Of a certain quiet wedding in Holland, and of the after-sailing of the two people concerned for the United States, I have no particulars worth recounting beyond those already known to you. Here they have lived happily ever since, and here--whatever home-sickness they may have felt in secret--they had made up their minds to pass the rest of their days, when a passage in your last letter set their hearts dancing with a happiness so unlooked-for that since it burst into their life like a flash of sunlight they have hardly been able to talk about anything else. "You write, my dear godmother, that you have fair hopes of being able, by and by, through bringing your influence to bear in the same all-powerful quarter in which you brought it to bear once before, to secure for Geoffrey a free pardon. What two happy and grateful beings you would, in that case, make of my husband and me, I should fail to tell you in any words. "You are kind enough to say, further, that you miss your Nelly's face and long to see it again, as also that there is a big corner for her in your will. We will say nothing about the latter, but, as regards the former, let me whisper in your ear that you need not be very much surprised if you see me in London in the course of next season. If Geoffrey should be free to come with me, what happiness that would be! But, in any case, I think you may look forward pretty confidently to seeing your vagrant goddaughter. "You will readily believe me when I tell you that I am also very desirous of setting eyes again on my young kinsman, Evan Cortelyon, the account of whose abduction and recovery had for you such a special interest. (Don't forget, please, that his recovery was wholly due to my dear husband.) He has been made a ward in Chancery, and although I have frequent news of him, and am assured that he is well and happy, yet that is not like seeing him and feeling his dear arms about my neck. "What you had to tell me in your last letter anent the Hon. Mrs. Bullivant took me by surprise, as you said it would; but I'm afraid my disposition is not of a sufficiently forgiving kind to allow of my stating, with any regard for truth, that I feel sorry for her, because I certainly do nothing of the kind. "My surprise arises from the fact that she--of all women I have ever known the most unlikely--should have allowed herself to be so thoroughly hoodwinked as she seems to have been over her marriage with the Earl of Mortlake. Of course she was dazzled by the prospect of becoming a countess, and by the likelihood--you say she regarded it as a certainty--that in less than a twelvemonth she would be left a widow (a titled widow with a handsome jointure), such a mere wreck of humanity was his lordship, to all seeming, when she accepted him, besides being more than double her age.