[Illustration] Stella Fregelius A TALE OF THREE DESTINIES by H. Rider Haggard First Published 1904. “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus; strepitumque Acherontis avari.” Contents DEDICATION AUTHOR’S NOTE STELLA FREGELIUS CHAPTER I. MORRIS, MARY, AND THE AEROPHONE CHAPTER II. THE COLONEL AND SOME REFLECTIONS CHAPTER III. “POOR PORSON” CHAPTER IV. MARY PREACHES AND THE COLONEL PREVAILS CHAPTER V. A PROPOSAL AND A PROMISE CHAPTER VI. THE GOOD DAYS CHAPTER VII. BEAULIEU CHAPTER VIII. THE SUNK ROCKS AND THE SINGER CHAPTER IX. MISS FREGELIUS CHAPTER X. DAWN AND THE LAND CHAPTER XI. A MORNING SERVICE CHAPTER XII. MR. LAYARD’S WOOING CHAPTER XIII. TWO QUESTIONS, AND THE ANSWER CHAPTER XIV. THE RETURN OF THE COLONEL CHAPTER XV. THREE INTERVIEWS CHAPTER XVI. A MARRIAGE AND AFTER CHAPTER XVII. THE RETURN OF MARY CHAPTER XVIII. TWO EXPLANATIONS CHAPTER XIX. MORRIS, THE MARRIED MAN CHAPTER XX. STELLA’S DIARY CHAPTER XXI. THE END OF STELLA’S DIARY CHAPTER XXII. THE EVIL GATE CHAPTER XXIII. STELLA COMES CHAPTER XXIV. DREAMS AND THE SLEEP DEDICATION My Dear John Berwick, When you read her history in MS. you thought well of “Stella Fregelius” and urged her introduction to the world. Therefore I ask you, my severe and accomplished critic, to accept the burden of a book for which you are to some extent responsible. Whatever its fate, at least it has pleased you and therefore has not been written quite in vain. H. Rider Haggard. Ditchingham, 25th August, 1903. AUTHOR’S NOTE The author feels that he owes some apology to his readers for his boldness in offering to them a modest story which is in no sense a romance of the character that perhaps they expect from him; which has, moreover, few exciting incidents and no climax of the accustomed order, since the end of it only indicates its real beginning. His excuse must be that, in the first instance, he wrote it purely to please himself and now publishes it in the hope that it may please some others. The problem of such a conflict, common enough mayhap did we but know it, between a departed and a present personality, of which the battle-ground is a bereaved human heart and the prize its complete possession; between earthly duty and spiritual desire also; was one that had long attracted him. Finding at length a few months of leisure, he treated the difficult theme, not indeed as he would have wished to do, but as best he could.