"What in the name of common sense could have induced you to imagine that I should pay the two quarterly incomes some weeks before they were due, and to send Ann and that man Fennel here with your orders that I should do so? Pretty ideas of trusteeship you must have! If you are over head and ears in debt, as they tell me, and for that reason wish to forestall the time for payment, _I_ can't help it. It is no reason with me. Your money will be forwarded to Sainteville, at the proper period, to _yourself_. Do not ask me again to pay it into Ann's hands, and to accept her receipt for it. I can do nothing of the kind. Ann's share will be sent at the same time. She tells me she is returning to you. She must give me her own receipt for it, and you must give me yours. "Your affectionate kinsman, "WILLIAM SELBY." Just for a few minutes Lavinia Preen did not understand this letter. What could it mean? Why had Colonel Selby written it to her? Then the truth flashed into her mind. Nancy (induced, of course, by Edwin Fennel) had gone with him to Colonel Selby, purporting to have been sent by Lavinia, to ask him to pay them the quarter's money not due until the end of December, and not only Nancy's share but Lavinia's as well. "Why, it would have been nothing short of swindling!" cried Lavinia, as she gazed in dismay at the colonel's letter. In the indignation of the moment, she took pen and ink and wrote an answer to William Selby. Partly enlightening him--not quite--but telling him that her money must never be paid to any one but herself, and that the present matter had better be hushed up for Ann's sake, who was as a reed in the hands of the man she had married. Colonel Selby exploded a little when he received this answer. Down he sat in his turn, and wrote a short, sharp note to Edwin Fennel, giving that estimable man a little of his mind, and warning him that he must not be surprised if the police were advised to look after him. When Edward Fennel received this decisive note through an address he had given to Colonel Selby, but not the one at Camberwell, he called Miss Lavinia Preen all the laudatory names in the thieves' dictionary. And on the feast of St. Andrew, which as every one knows is the last day of November, the letters came to an end with the following one from Nancy: "All being well, my dear Lavinia, we propose to return home by next Sunday's boat, which ought to get in before three o'clock in the afternoon. On Wednesday, Edwin met Charley Palliser in the Strand, and had a chat with him, and heard all the Sainteville news; not that there seemed much to hear. Charley says he runs over to London pretty often now, his mother being ill. Of course you will not mind waiting dinner for us on Sunday. "Ever your loving sister, "ANN."