This little postscript was a never failing source of comfort and encouragement to Fillmore Flagg. He read it and re-read it again and again: in his ecstacy he caught himself kissing it a dozen times the first week after it reached him. With each reading his hitherto dormant love nature gathered force and intensity. In the throbbing tide of joyful emotions, he was suffused with a strange new happiness. He blushed like a girl as the certainty came home to his heart that at last his love for this beautiful woman was returned. It may be marked as noteworthy that this important letter came to Fillmore Flagg just eight months after his parting with Fern Fenwick at her cottage home on the Hudson. While meditating and luxuriating under the spell of the happy significance of this event, as affecting his future life, he thanked his angel friends for so successfully speeding his wooing. With this assurance he was confident that at last his star of destiny was dominant in the sky of love. Calmly serene, he could now await the approach of whatever trials in life the future might have in store for him. Nothing could shake him from this fortress of love! Nothing could intervene to separate his life from the life of his beloved Fern! With a sigh of contentment, he prepared to devote himself more ambitiously and more industriously than ever before, to the development of Solaris Farm. He wooed every inventive thought; he planned night and day to overcome all obstacles that presented themselves. In his letters to Fern Fenwick, rejoicing in a freedom to express himself without restraint on the limitless theme of his great love for her, he filled page after page with eloquent adoration of his heart's chosen one--his highest ideal of the glorious perfection of womanhood. The effect on Fillmore Flagg of this fervent, all-absorbing love, was most excellent; it broadened and purified his life, eliminating from it all the dross of selfishness. He took a new interest in the lives of every married couple and every pair of lovers on the farm. By persevering effort, tact and skill, he completely won their confidence. He shared their hopes, plans, joys, sorrows, loves and crosses. In all this he never once failed to increase their love for him and their devotion to the farm. CHAPTER XVIII. CLUB LIFE AT SOLARIS.