"You would have bought my love!" he says, with a bitter sneer. "Know, then, that with a dozen Hersts at your back, I loathe you too much ever to be more to you than I now am, and that is--nothing." Quietly but forcibly he puts her from him, and leaves the room. Outside in the hall he encounters Sir Penthony, who has been lingering there with intent to waylay him. However rejoiced Stafford may be at Molly's luck, he is profoundly grieved for Philip. "I know it is scarcely form to express sympathy on such occasions," he says, with some hesitation, laying his hand on Shadwell's shoulder. "But I must tell you how I regret, for your sake, all that has taken place." "Thank you, Stafford. You are one of the very few whose sympathy is never oppressive. But do not be uneasy about me," with a short laugh. "I dare say I shall manage to exist. I have five hundred a year of my own, and my grandfather's thoughtfulness has made it a thousand. No doubt I shall keep body and soul together, though there is no disguising the fact that I feel keenly the difference between one thousand and twenty." "My dear fellow, I am glad to see you take it so well. I don't believe there are a dozen men of my acquaintance who would be capable of showing such pluck as you have done." "I have always had a fancy for exploring. I shall go abroad and see some life; the sooner the better. I thank you with all my heart, Stafford, for your kindness. I thank you--and"--with a slight break in his voice--"good-bye!" He presses Stafford's hand warmly, and, before the other can reply, is gone. Half an hour later, Marcia, sweeping into her room in a torrent of passion impossible to quell, summons her maid by a violent attack on her bell. "Take off this detested mourning," she says to the astonished girl. "Remove it from my sight. And get me a colored gown and a Bradshaw." The maid, half frightened, obeys, and that night Marcia Amherst quits her English home forever. CHAPTER XXXVII. "Fare thee well! and if forever, Still forever, fare thee well!" --Byron. "Oh, Cecil! now I can marry Tedcastle," says Molly, at the end of a long and exhaustive conversation that has taken place in her own room. She blushes a little as she says it; but it is honestly her first thought, and she gives utterance to it. "Letitia, too, and the children,--I can provide for them. I shall buy back dear old Brooklyn, and give it to them, and they shall be happy once more." "I agree with Lord Byron," says Cecil, laughing. "'Money makes the man; the want of it, his fellow.' You ought to feel like some princess out of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments." "I feel much more like an intruder. What right have I to Herst? What shall I do with so much money?"