But she determined that she would leave the home in which she had been born, and had passed so many happy and so many unhappy days, as though she were never to see it again. All her packing had been done, down to the last fragment of an old letter that was stuffed into her writing-desk; but, nevertheless, she went about the house with a candle in her hand, as though she were still looking that nothing had been omitted, while she was in truth saying farewell in her heart to every corner which she knew so well. When at last she came down to pour out for her desolate cousin his cup of tea, she declared that everything was done. "You may go to work now, Will," she said, "and do what you please with the old place. My jurisdiction in it is over." "Not altogether," said he. He no longer spoke like a despairing lover. Indeed there was a smile round his mouth, and his voice was cheery. "Yes;--altogether. I give over my sovereignty from this moment;--and a dirty dilapidated sovereignty it is." "That's all very well to say." "And also very well to do. What best pleases me in going to Aylmer Castle just now is the power it gives me of doing at once that which otherwise I might have put off till the doing of it had become much more unpleasant. Mr. Belton, there is the key of the cellar,--which I believe gentlemen always regard as the real sign of possession. I don't advise you to trust much to the contents." He took the key from her, and without saying a word chucked it across the room on to an old sofa. "If you won't take it, you had better, at any rate, have it tied up with the others," she said. "I dare say you'll know where to find it when you want it," he answered. "I shall never want it." "Then it's as well there as anywhere else." "But you won't remember, Will." "I don't suppose I shall have occasion for remembering." Then he paused a moment before he went on. "I have told you before that I do not intend to take possession of the place. I do not regard it as mine at all." "And whose is it, then?" "Yours." "No, dear Will; it is not mine. You know that." "I intend that it shall be so, and therefore you might as well put the keys where you will know how to find them." After he had gone she did take up the key, and tied it with sundry others, which she intended to give to the old servant who was to be left in charge of the house. But after a few moments' consideration she took the cellar key again off the bunch, and put it back upon the sofa,--in the place to which he had thrown it.