He waited, and at the appointed time--at the end of another week--a letter came, very similar to the last, and in which she said that she would have written as usual, only that she was very busy. "Very busy," said Luke to himself, as he sat in his dingy room, gazing straight before him, through the dull window, at the smoky chimney-pots, but seeing, as in a picture, the interior of Lawford Girls' School, with its mistress moving from class to class. "Very busy." He sighed deeply, and went on with his reading. From that time Sage's letters came fortnightly, Luke sending two for one, but he made no complaint, keeping rigidly to his old stern determination. "I said I would place myself in a worthy position to win her," he said. "That I will do. What is more, I will be faithful, come what may-- faithful, even in my belief in her." He sat, hot of eye and weary of brain, thinking whether he ought not to go down and see why this gradual change was taking place, but in his stern repression of self he felt that to go down unexpectedly would be like mistrusting the woman he hoped to make his wife, and this he could not bear. Study--hard study--was Luke Ross's medicine for a mind diseased, and whenever doubting thoughts and mistrust came hand in hand to torture him he forced himself to attend to his studies, making, by prodigious efforts, great advances in the learned treatises he was striving to master, but only at the expense of his health. "It is for Sage," he said, by way of encouragement, and when doubts became very strong he held up the shield of his faith. "No," he would say aloud, "writing is, perhaps, irksome to one who has so much to do, but her heart is mine, and save from her own lips I would never believe that she could let it stray." In his stern determination to master the profession for which he was reading, Luke Ross only allowed himself a very rare visit home; and though he had felt frequent urgings of late he fought them down, setting his teeth, and vowing that he would not go before the appointed time. It was a terrible fight when once the dire attacks of doubt were made, and repeated from day to day, for during the weeks of the past month Sage's letters had grown more irregular still, as if she felt emboldened to be more careless from that absence of reproach. But the truth was that every letter from London was read by Sage with bitter misery and reproach, and her replies were often so blotted with tears that they were destroyed instead of being posted, and it was only those which escaped the fire which he received. It only wanted a week of the time he had settled in his own mind, and in spite of his efforts to be calm, it was almost more than he could do to keep on with his task. A strong feeling was urging him to go down at once, see Sage, and learn the worst, for a fortnight had again passed and no letter.