Everything would go well, everything must go well; he should make his fortune while he was yet young, and come back to the flowery arches and clashing bells of rejoicing Mitchelhurst. Beyond that day her fancy hardly went. Of course he would have to take the name of Rothwell, the name which, for the perfection of her romance, should have been his by right. At that remembrance she paused dissatisfied--the pork-butcher was the one strong touch of reality in the whole story. In fact the mere thought of him brought her back to everyday life, and to the certainty that she must waste no more time in dreams. Reynold, consulting his uncle's letter, found with some surprise that he had pushed silence to its utmost limit, and that another day's delay would have overstepped the boundary which Mr. Harding had so imperiously set. The discovery was a shock; it took away his breath for a moment, and then sent the blood coursing through his veins with a tingling exhilaration, the sense of a peril narrowly escaped. He was glad--glad in a defiant, unreasonable fashion--that he had not yielded till the last day, though at the same time he was uneasy till his answer should be despatched. He went up to his room immediately after breakfast, and sat down to his task at the writing-table which faced the great window. After one or two unsatisfactory beginnings he ended with the simplest possible note of acceptance, to which he added a postscript, informing his uncle that he should remain two or three days longer at Mitchelhurst Place, and hoped to receive his instructions there. He wrote a few lines to end the question of the tutorship for which he had been waiting, addressed the two envelopes, and leaned back in his chair to read his letters over before folding them. As he did so he looked out over the far-spreading landscape. The sunshine broke through the veil of misty cloud and widened slowly over the land, catching here the sails of a windmill, idle in the autumn calm, there a church spire, or a bit of white road, or a group of poplars, or the red wall of an old farmhouse. The silver grey gave place to vaporous gold, and a pale brightness illumined the paper in his hand on which those fateful lines were written. One would have said Mitchelhurst was smiling broadly at his resolution. Reynold stretched himself and returned the smile as if the landscape were an old friend who greeted him, and tilting his chair backward he thrust his letter into the directed cover. "When I come back," he said to himself, "I will take this room for mine." Writing his acceptance of his uncle's offer had not been pleasant, yet now that it was done he contemplated the superscription, "_R. Harding, Esq._,"