“I have received your kind letter, and write to tell you that it is of no use your coming to London to see me to-morrow, as I was married this afternoon to Mr. Samuel Rock; and so good-bye! With all good wishes, “Believe me, dear sir, “Ever yours,           “JOAN.”       Joan was married on a Thursday; and upon the following morning Henry, who had slept but ill, rose early and went out before breakfast. As it chanced, the weather was mild, and the Rosham fields and woods looked soft and beautiful in the hazy November light. Henry walked to and fro about them, stopping here to admire the view, and there to speak a few kindly words to some labourer going to his daily toil, or to watch the pheasants drawing back to covert after filling their crops upon the stubble. Thus he lingered till long past the hour for breakfast, for he was sad at heart and loath to quit the lands that, as he thought, he would see no more, since he had determined not to revisit Rosham when once he had made Joan his wife. He felt that he was doing right in marrying her, but it was idle to deny that she was costing him dear. For three centuries his forefathers had owned these wide, familiar lands; there was no house upon them that they had not built; with the exception of a few ancient pollards there was scarcely a tree that they had not planted; and now he must send them to the hammer because he had been unlucky enough to fall in love with the wrong woman. Well, such was his fortune, and he must make the best of it. Still he may be pardoned if it wrung his heart to think that, in all human probability, he would never again see those fields and friendly faces, and that in his person the race of Graves were looking their last upon the soil that for hundreds of years had fed them while alive and covered them when dead. In a healthy man, however, even sentiment is not proof against hunger, so it came about that at last Henry limped home to breakfast with a heavy heart, and, having ordered the dog that trotted at his heels back to its kennel, he entered the house by the side door and went to the dining-room. On his plate were several letters. He opened the first, which he noticed had an official frank in the left-hand corner. It was from his friend the under-secretary, informing him that, as it chanced, there was a billet open in Africa, and that he had obtained a promise from a colleague, in whose hands lay the patronage of the appointment, that if he proved suitable in some particulars, he, Henry, should have the offer of it. The letter added that, although the post was worth only six hundred a year, it was in a good climate, and would certainly lead to better things; and that the writer would be glad if he would come to town to see about the matter as soon as might be convenient to him, since, when it became known that the place was vacant, there were sure to be crowds of people after it who had claims upon the Government.