So passed a bitter week: and in the course of it he bethought him of the tears he had made a true Italian lady shed; and never pitied her a grain till now. He was going abroad: on his desk lay a little crumpled paper. It was Kate's entreaty for forgiveness. He had ground it in his hand, and ridden away with it. Now he was going away, he resolved to answer her. He wrote a letter full of bitter reproaches; read it over; and tore it up. He wrote a satirical and cutting letter: read it; and tore it up. He wrote her a mawkish letter; read it; and tore it up. The priest's words, scorned at first, had sunk into him a little. He walked about the room, and tried to see it all like a bystander. He examined her writing closely: the pen had scarcely marked the paper. They were the timidest strokes. The writer seemed to kneel to him. He summoned all his manhood, his fortitude, his generosity, and, above all, his high-breeding; and produced the following letter; and this one he sent: "MISTRESS KATE,--I leave England to-day for your sake; and shall never return unless the day shall come when I can look on you but as a friend. The love that ends in hate, that is too sorry a thing to come betwixt you and me. "If you have used me ill, your punishment is this; you have given me the right to say to you--I forgive you. "GEORGE NEVILLE." And he went straight to Italy. Kate laid his note upon her knee, and sighed deeply; and said, "Poor fellow! How noble of him! What can such men as this see in any woman to go and fall in love with her?" Griffith found her with a tear in her eye. He took her out walking, and laid all his radiant plans of wedded life before her. She came back flushed, and beaming with complacency and beauty. Old Peyton was brought to consent to the marriage. Only he attached one condition, that Bolton and Hernshaw should be settled on Kate for her separate use. To this Griffith assented readily; but Kate refused plump. "What, give him _myself_, and then grudge him my _estates!_" said she, with a look of lofty and beautiful scorn at her male advisers. But Father Francis, having regard to the temporal interests of his Church, exerted his strength and pertinacity, and tired her out; so those estates were put into trustees' hands, and tied up as tight as wax. This done, Griffith Gaunt and Kate Peyton were married, and made the finest pair that wedded in the county that year. As the bells burst into a merry peal, and they walked out of church man and wife, their path across the churchyard was strewed thick with flowers, emblematic no doubt of the path of life, that lay before so handsome a couple. They spent the honeymoon in London, and tasted earthly felicity. Yet did not quarrel after it; but subsided into the quiet complacency of wedded life. CHAPTER XIV Mr. and Mrs. Gaunt lived happily together--as times went.