say this from pique, but from conviction; for I have seen her and her husband, and I have seen her since her husband's death. She did not hold her perjured state long; nor did she win the prize for which she jilted me. I am a much richer man than her husband ever was, and he has left her comparatively poor. In a storm of rage and disgust I left England, without going to Knockholt--without having seen you since your childhood--without bidding my father farewell. This grieved him much: but I was free; I was not married. I was labouring under angry and bitter feelings towards all womankind. I should come home again, my father thought, still unmarried, and his hope would be fulfilled. He did not make the will. I remained away much longer than he supposed I should have done, and not nearly so long as in my anger and mortification I had determined to remain. You know the rest, dear Helen--you know that I lingered and dallied with time and duty, and did not go to Knockholt until it was all but too late. A little while before he met with the accident, my father had written a letter somewhat similar in purport; but he had not seen me then, and I suppose it was not warmly affectionate enough for the old man's liking, and he wrote that which I now mention at many, and, I fear, painful, intervals of his brief convalescence. It was finished just a week before he died. "You will have read all this with emotion, Helen; and I daresay at this point your feelings will be very painful. Mine are little less so, and the task of fully explaining them to you is delicate and difficult. The truthfulness, the candour of your nature will come to my assistance when you read, as their remembrance aids me while I write. My first impulse on reading my father's letter was to exult in the thought that there was anything possible to me by which his wishes could be respected. My second--and it came speedily--was to feel that the marriage he desired between us never could take place. Are you reassured, Helen? Have you been frightened at the image your fancy has created, of a debt of gratitude to be discharged to Sir Peregrine at the cost of your own happiness, or disavowed at the cost of seeming cold, ungrateful, and undutiful? Have you had a vision of me in the character of an importunate suitor, half imploring a concession, half pressing a right, and wholly distasteful to you? If you have, dismiss it, for it is only a vision, and never will be realized to distress you. Why do I say this? Because I know that not only do you not love me, but that you do love Cuthbert Farleigh. Forgive the plainness and directness with which I allude to a fact yet perhaps unavowed to him, but perfectly well known by and acknowledged to yourself. No betrothal could make you more truly his than you have been by the tacit promise of your own heart--I know not for how long, but before I came to Knockholt Park, I am sure. If I had not seen the man, I should equally