But Sylvia, in common with most people who possess thinking and feeling powers of a high order, had also a great fund of sound good sense, which came to her rescue. She learned to smile at her own childish folly, but it was rather a sad and bitter smile: the folly was childish, but the pain was startlingly real. She did not like to look at Deerchase after that, because it brought home to her how great a fool she had been. And then, having lost that illusion--sad to say--she had no other to take its place. Nothing is more intolerable to a young, imaginative soul than to be turned out of the fairy kingdom of fancy. It is all theirs--palaces, smiling courtiers, crown jewels, and all--and they revel in a royal summer time. Then, some fine day, the pretty dream melts away and leaves a black abyss, and then Common Sense, the old curmudgeon, shows himself; and when, as in Sylvia’s case, the palace would be rebuilt, the flattering courtiers recalled, the recollection of the pain of its destruction is too keen. Driven by common sense, Sylvia concluded to live in the real world, not in the imaginary one. This wise resolve was a good deal helped by the grotesque form the same picture that had been in her mind took in Mrs. Shapleigh’s. Sylvia could not help laughing any more than Mr. Shapleigh could when Mrs. Shapleigh was all for his sending a letter to Skelton, reproaching him for his “shameful treatment of Sylvia.” The worthy woman had got all the particulars of that odd, childish visit out of Sylvia, and bewailed herself as follows: “Was there ever such a poor, unlucky creature as I! Here for eighteen years I’ve had but one single, solitary idea in my head, and that was to see Sylvia mistress of Deerchase; and all through your fault, Mr. Shapleigh, in not throwing them together when you were Richard Skelton’s guardian, I am a heart-broken and disappointed woman. But now that I’ve had this awful blow, it’s as little as you can do to improve the house and put me up a new wing, as I’ve often asked you.” “Put you up a new swing?” asked Mr. Shapleigh, becoming very deaf. “Now, Belinda, what on earth do you want with a swing at your time of life? You’ll be wanting a skipping-rope next.” Mr. Shapleigh’s deafness was so obstinate regarding the proposed new wing that Mrs. Shapleigh was unable to make him understand her. Within six months came another startling piece of information. Skelton’s wife had died, and had left him a great fortune upon condition that he did not marry again.