It was not till Wentworth was fairly gone from the station shut up by himself in a compartment of a first-class carriage, and unapproached by any spectator, that he took out from his pocket and read over again the letter and telegram which had called him away thus hurriedly out of the happiness of his new life. The letter was on blue paper, not without a suspicion of greasiness, and very badly written in a hand which might have been that of a shopman or a schoolboy. But it was signed by a female name, and this is what it said:-- ‘DEAR MR. WENTWORTH,-- ‘Alice came home in bad health three months ago. She’s been very bad ever since, and there is now no hopes of her. It’s consumption and heart complaint, and what the doctor calls a complickation. For the last fortnight she’s been weaker and weaker every day, and yesterday was took much worse, and hasn’t but a day or two to live. She says as she can’t die happy without seeing you. She calls for you all the time she’s waking, both night and day. Oh, Mr. Wentworth, you always was a kind gentleman, not like some; I know as you would have nothing to say to her if she was well: but being as she’s very ill and near her death, I do hope as you’ll listen to me. You was the first as she ever took a fancy to, she says. But if you come, oh come at oncet, for there is not a moment to be lost. ‘Yours truly, ‘MATILDA.’ He unfolded the telegram afterwards and read, ‘If you want to find her in life, come at once.’ Wentworth remarked with a kind of horrible calm, and even a smile, that the telegraph people had corrected the spelling. This was the summons for which he had left Grace. He had read both more than once. Now that he had obeyed the call, he asked himself was it indeed so necessary--ought he to have done it? There had been perhaps something in the force of the contrast, something in the happiness which was so much more than he deserved, in the purity and nobleness of the woman who had given him her hand, and who was making her spotless atmosphere his, that stung him with that intolerable, remorseful pity, the impulse of which is not to be resisted. Standing by the side of his bride, and on the edge of a life altogether above his deserts, he had felt that he could not resist this appeal to him. To refuse to speak a word of comfort to a dying creature--he to whom God had been so good--how was it possible? Comfort! What comfort could he give? He might bid her repent, as he had repented. But his repentance had been paid, it had been richly recompensed, it was setting open to him the doors of every happiness; whereas to this sharer of his iniquities it was to be followed only by suffering and death.