‘Dear old house, dear old home, thank God we shall never be driven from you!’ said Laura, looking round the study in which so many eventful scenes of her life had been passed, the room where she and John Treverton had first met. While Laura was sitting by the fire with her husband’s letter in her hand, musing upon its contents, the door was suddenly flung open, and Celia rushed into the room and dropped on her knees by her friend’s chair. ‘Laura, what has come between us?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why do you shut me out of your heart? I know there is something wrong. I can see it in papa’s manner. Have I been so false a friend that you are afraid to trust me?’ The brightly earnest face was so full of warm and truthful feeling that Laura had not the heart to resent this impetuous intrusion. She had told Trimmer that she would see no one, but Celia had set Trimmer at defiance, and had insisted on coming unannounced to the study. ‘You are not false, Celia,’ Laura answered gravely, ‘but I have good reason to know that your brother is my husband’s enemy.’ ‘Poor Edward,’ sighed Celia. ‘It’s very cruel of you to say such a thing, Laura. You know how devotedly he loved you, and what a blow your marriage was to him.’ ‘Was it really, Celia? He did not take much trouble to avert the blow.’ ‘You mean that he never proposed,’ said Celia. ‘My dear Laura, what would have been the use of his asking you to marry him when he was without the means of keeping a wife? It is quite as much as he can do to clothe himself decently by the uttermost exertion of his genius, though he is really second only to Swinburne, as you know. He has too much of the poetic temperament to face the horrors of poverty,’ concluded Celia, quoting her brother’s own account of himself. ‘I think a few poets--and some of the first quality--have faced those horrors, Celia.’ ‘Because they were obliged, dear. They were in the quagmire, and couldn’t get out; like Chatterton and Burns, and ever so many poor dears. But surely those were not of the highest order. Great poets are like Byron and Shelley. They require yachts and Italian villas, and thoroughbred horses, and Newfoundland dogs, and things,’ said Celia with conviction. ‘Well, dearest, I bear Edward no ill-will for not having proposed to me, because if he had I could have only refused him; but don’t you think there is an extremity of folly and weakness in his affecting to feel injured by my marrying some one else?’ ‘It isn’t affectation,’ protested Celia. ‘It’s reality. He does feel deeply, cruelly injured by your marriage with Mr. Treverton. You can’t be angry with him, Laura, for a prejudice that results from his affection for you.’ ‘I am very angry with him for his unjust and unreasonable hatred of my husband. I believe, Celia, if you knew the extent of his enmity, you too would feel indignant at such injustice.’