“There is nothing in his letter to me which indicates indifference to your wishes,” he said; “it is only a business letter; but in a practical way it is the strongest evidence of a husband’s devotion that ever came to my knowledge. We lawyers are a matter-of-fact set of men, and we are apt to form our conclusions in a matter-of-fact way. What other people would treat as an affair of sentiment, we look at as an affair of figures; and I must say, Mrs. Tredethlyn, that gauged by that standard, your husband comes out nobly.” “But I want him to come back to me,” Maude exclaimed, simply; “I don’t want to be rich--or to live like a woman of fashion. He wrongs me most cruelly when he thinks that I married him for his money. I married him because he was good to my father. Do you think I could accept the income which that letter places at my disposal, knowing that my husband has left his native country because of me? Tell me what I am to do, Mr. Kursdale. I know that Mr. Tredethlyn is unhappy, and that a few words from me would set all right. What am I to do?” “We must try to send him the few words, my dear Mrs. Tredethlyn,” answered the lawyer, cheerfully. “South America is not so very far off nowadays; and you know that even in Alexander Pope’s time a sigh might be wafted from Indus to the Pole, by means of ocean postage. We’ll get your letter delivered to Mr. Tredethlyn as quickly as the improvements of modern science will allow, you may depend upon it. Shall I send the letter you enclosed to me the other day? Perhaps you would like to add something to it--another postscript, eh? Ladies have such a _penchant_ for postscripts,” said the lawyer, lapsing into mild facetiousness, which he imagined to be of an eminently consolatory character. There are people who believe that a feeble joke is an infallible specific for a deeply rooted grief. “I will send a clerk off to Plymouth by the next train,” said Mr. Kursdale, with his hand upon the spring of a little bell beside him. He spoke as coolly as if he had been talking of sending a clerk over the way. “If by any chance the _Kingfisher_ has not sailed when the young man arrives, your husband will have the letter before dark. If the _Kingfisher_ has sailed, the letter must be sent on by the next mail. At the worst, Mr. Tredethlyn may be back in six or seven weeks.”