He remained in Italy with his mother and her household through the winter which Marion had passed at Mallingford. The month of May saw them all at last re-established at Medhurst, but not for very long. The place had been to some extent neglected during the two or three years of the family’s absence; the house looked dingy and smelt fusty. Before they could take up their quarters therein “for good,” before Florence’s marriage could be celebrated with fitting magnificence, the mansion must be thoroughly “done up”—“beautified,” I believe, is the correct technical expression. So for a season Medhurst was delivered over to the tender mercies of painters and paper-hangers, upholsterers and decorators, and “the family,” par excellence, of the neighbourhood, flitted north-wards for the time, to a favourite and pleasant little watering-place, in the same county where Geoffrey and his wife were spending their honeymoon, but a few hours’ drive from the very inn which for some days past they had made their head-quarters. Sir Ralph was still with his mother. She had “made a point” of his remaining with her for the first few months of her return home, and he, having no pressing interests of his own was willing enough to agree to her wishes. Florence was no longer with them. The few weeks intervening between their arrival in England and the time fixed for her marriage, she had preferred to spend in the “genteel” terrace with her mother and sisters. Nor did this decision call for any great exercise of self-denial on her part, for besides the real pleasure of being with her relations and showing off the honours present and prospective, attendant on the bride of Chepstow the golden, her mother’s modest dwelling was conveniently situated for expending to the best advantage in the purchase of a trousseau, the very liberal parting gift of her “dearest aunt and second mother.” Then in the future glittered Medhurst and the gorgeous preparations for the nuptials of the beauty and the millionaire. Truly Florence’s cup of happiness was full! And plainly speaking, she was not missed by her late entertainers. Lady Severn and her son got on much better without her. Sir Ralph was therefore at the little watering-place of Friars’ Springs, when, one day about the middle of July, a strange thing happened to him. He received one morning, forwarded from Medhurst, an Indian letter, addressed to him in the same handwriting as the black-bordered envelope which last year had brought back to him his own letter to Miss Freer, a silent message from poor Cissy’s tomb, telling that his last hope was gone. He was alone when he received this unexpected letter. Fortunately so, for not all his practised self-control could have concealed from other eyes the overwhelming intensity of emotion caused by the perusal of its extraordinary contents.