Denzil, she knew, would now lose the liberal allowance his father had promised him after leaving Sandhurst on appointment; but with tentage, batta, and other allowance, a subaltern can live on his pay in India, when he might starve elsewhere. In her misery Constance gathered some comfort from this knowledge, though ruin and penury--or work for which they were both unfitted--were all that remained to her and Sybil now. CHAPTER XXIV. THE DOCTRINE OF CHANCES. And what of Audley, the lover, all this time? He had written from Rhoscadzhel to Constance, imploring her permission in moving terms to see Sybil once again, and have some farewell explanation with her, ere he departed to India, too probably for years; for, with the usual inconsistency of the human heart, no sooner did he find himself repelled, than he felt the attraction towards her redoubled. This letter had been addressed to Constance as "Mrs. Devereaux;" and, without reflecting that he could not bestow upon her a title already borne by his own mother, she felt fresh anger at the circumstance. Without showing the missive to Sybil, who conceived it might be on some legal business, she cast it in the fire, and replied by an emphatic refusal, adding that if he came near the villa, which they were soon about to leave, her servant, Winny Braddon (she had but one domestic now) had received orders not to admit him. Undeterred, he next wrote to Sybil, but this effort proved equally unavailing. Resolved not to add to her mother's distress by any disobedience or duplicity on her part, she showed her the letter unopened; and it was at once re-addressed to Rhoscadzhel, with the envelope unbroken, and Audley flushed to the temples when it was placed in his hand. He felt himself to be still solemnly engaged to Sybil, yet hopelessly separated from her, through no fault of his own--separated without even a lovers' quarrel. He wondered now at the selfish thoughts which more than once had occurred to him, particularly on that day when he quitted the library, and even the house, in such haste to avoid her, and times there were when he blushed at the memory of it. Relations they were unquestionably by blood, whether there had been a marriage or no marriage; and this made Audley reflect all the more deeply and tenderly on the subject of his severed ties with Sybil. He wished to restore the ring to her in person, to replace it on her finger as a memento of himself; for the repossession of it made him restless and uneasy, as the crazed Halfheller with his bottle-imp; and if he was to do this, there was no time to be lost, as he had but one day to spend in Cornwall now.