It was late in April when I finally went back to Belfield, and even by that time I was so far from possessing strength or health that not only Mr. Floyd accompanied me, but Dr. Sharpe and Mills as well. Jack Holt and Harry Dart and Tony Thorpe came about me at once: all the good people of Belfield thronged to bring me something--words of comfort and cheer, jellies, Easter lilies, cakes and oranges--but the one I had most longed to see did not come. Once more at home, I grew stronger both in body and mind: the spring-time did me good, although welling up within me all the time, so imperiously, so irresistibly, that I never entirely lost the pain, was the thought that never before had I failed to watch the first uncoilings of the fern-fronds beneath the dead leaves of the former year; the willow catkins, the fragrant arbutus, all the signs of inspiration from the earliest breaths of spring in the hedges and meadows and woods about Belfield. But still, as I lay on my sofa and tried four times a day the great feat of crossing our parlor from wall to wall, I could guess all the beautiful things that were going on out of doors, and I was happier for the coming summer-time, for is any state so sombre, any grief so unquenchable, any burden of despondency so oppressive, but that the divine gladness of the awakening earth stirs it with its revivifying breath? My misfortune did not inspire me with mystical, heavenly resignation, but I began to be able to look its results in the face. "Nothing so hampers us in life as the failure to accept our fate with courage," my guardian said to me once. "Be as brave as you can. Do you remember what Medea says in reply to that cruel reminder of her losses?--'Husband, countrymen, riches, all gone from you: what remains?' She answers, 'Medea remains.'" It had become evident to me, without interrogations on my part, that my mother and Mr. Floyd had resigned at least all present hopes of marriage. All their thoughts seemed to be centred in me, and I felt myself a hinderance in their plans of happiness. So, while I was still holding my guardian's hand, I reminded him of our talk on the bluff that far-off November morning. "Do you think I would take your mother from you too, my dear boy?" said he bluntly. "Do you think she would come to me if I wanted to take her?" "But it seems too much of a sacrifice." "Get well, then, at once," Mr. Floyd exclaimed, laughing. "As soon as you can walk up the church-aisle all the Belfield wedding-bells shall ring their loudest." Jack Holt brought me some white roses one day in June, which I knew could never have grown anywhere in Belfield except against the eaves of a certain Gothic cottage. I asked him if Georgy sent them, and why she never came to see me. "I have wondered too why she never comes," he returned; "and I have asked her, but she tells me her mother bids her stay away from you."