"Will you stay where you are for the summer, while I go back and attend to my affairs at the West? If you will, I can come back again in the autumn, and we can then decide upon some settled plan for the future." "I can stay here, if you think best. But it seems to me as if I shall go wild with fear and loneliness in this great house, with no one but the servants, after you are gone. I don't know _what_ to do, Philip." "Is there no friend of your own sex who would be comfort and company, whom you could invite to stay with you till I come back? You will not wish to go into town this weather. Besides, my dear girl, I must tell you that the town-house will not be long in your hands. When the estate is settled up, this property here, and a small annuity possibly, will be all that I can save for you. Will it not be best for you to break up, dismiss the expensive array of servants, rent your house, and board in some agreeable family?" "Oh, Philip, I don't know. I can't think and I can't decide. I know nothing of business. I wish you to do every thing for me;" her helplessness appealed to him strongly. She could only think of one way with which she should be happy and content; but he did not propose that way. "I can only suggest this, then, for the present: stay where you are now until I go home and arrange matters there. I _must_ go home for a few weeks. In the mean time the affairs of the estate will be closing up. When I return, I will see to them; and when all is settled, if you wish to go to the West with me, you shall go. If I have a home by that time, you shall share it." "How share it, Philip?" He did not reply. He was resolved to see Alice Wilde again, to satisfy himself her character was all he had dreamed it--her love what he hoped; if so, nothing should tempt him from the fulfillment of the sweet promise he had made himself and her--neither gratitude to the dead nor sympathy with the living. CHAPTER X. RECONCILIATION.