There must be a word or two of retrospect. Shortly after Selina's death, Mr. Edwin Barley went abroad. Not a place on the European continent but he visited, one feverish object alone swaying him—the discovery of George Heneage. The detective police were at work in England with the same view: all in vain. At the end of three years he came back home; and almost close upon it there occurred some rupture between him and Charlotte Delves, who had remained at Hallam all that time as the house's mistress. People thought she cherished visions of becoming the house's bonâ fide mistress, its master's wife; if so, she was lamentably mistaken. Mr. Edwin Barley was wedded to Selina and her memory; he had no intention whatever of exalting another into her place. Whether Charlotte found out this in too sudden a manner; whether the cause was totally unconnected with this, certain it was a rupture occurred; and Charlotte threw up the housekeeping, and quitted the house. She took the same kind of service with an old man, a connexion also, of the name of Penn. He had married late in life, and had a young daughter, Lottie, who had been named after Charlotte Delves. Very much to the world's surprise—her little world—it was soon announced that Charlotte Delves was going to marry him. Mr. Edwin Barley, hearing of it, wrote to tell her what he thought of it in his own outspoken fearlessness: "Old Penn was quite a cripple, and three parts an idiot since he fell into his dotage. She would be better without him than with him, and would only make herself a laughing-stock if she married him." The gratuitous advice did not tend to heal the breach. Charlotte Delves did marry Mr. Penn, and very shortly afterwards was called upon to bury him. The young girl, Lottie, by whom her stepmother seemed to have done a good part, died within a year; and Mrs. Penn, left with a slender income, chose to go out in the world again. She became companion to a lady, and the years passed on.