"Well, since you have discovered my folly, I had better make a clean breast of it. After all, you have a right to know. It must sound pretty ridiculous, but I suppose that even monsters fall in love. Caliban himself had the taste to desire Miranda, which is horrible and revolting. However, that is what has happened to me.... During all the days of your absence, my heart was in the post-bag. Every letter you wrote is here, hoarded like a miser's gold." He slipped the elastic band which held them, and smiled wryly as he showed the worn corners of the paper. "I studied these, and you in them," he went on hurriedly. "I learned each day more of your honesty, your scrupulous accuracy, your economy in spending money which was, as you thought, not your own!... Virginia, in my youth your mother wrote me pages of love-letters! The whole of them were not worth one line of this unconscious self-revelation of yours.... You marvellous creature! How you managed to spend so little is what puzzles me. And Tony, too! Yes, old Grover let that out. Were _you_ paying for Tony? And if so, from what fund did his expenses come?" His tone had changed insensibly from tense emotion to frank interest. He raised his head, interrogating her with a look which was almost a smile. She responded eagerly. "Oh, I managed that quite easily, out of my own allowance. It cost so little! I only paid ten shillings a week for his small top-floor bedroom. Then I paid in ten shillings a week to the board money, and that was all, except his railway journey. You see, I could not send him back to Wayhurst, he would have been so miserable, all alone in the house, poor darling. It would have been hard for him, would it not? When we were all at the sea, and he had not seen the sea for so long! It did him so much good, he enjoyed it all so hugely." ... She forgot her own affairs and his in the glow of her sisterly affection. He smiled upon her a little sadly. "But you must be penniless yourself?" he said. "Surely your private account is overdrawn?" "Oh, _no_, Osbert! You forget how much you gave me and how little I am used to make do with! I have not wanted anything, and I have quite a big balance----" "You have a positive genius for sacrifice," he said, laying aside the packet of letters, and studying her. "You would give up everything for Pansy, for Tony, for mother. And now--it being, from your point of view, your duty--you are ready to make the final act of self-abnegation, to sacrifice yourself for Osbert, too?" His voice had changed. It seemed as if he strove to keep to his old ironic note; but some other force throbbed in his undertone, and it affected Virginia strangely. "Of course I am. I promised," she assured him instantly, raising her sweet, puzzled eyes to his tense face. He gave a laugh which startled her, tossed the package of letters upon the table, rose, and went to the window.