"I am not much good," he said: for ever excusing his shortcomings by his self-depreciation. "I never set up for being a good man; but I have some feeling of honour left in me at the worst." He wrote to Isabel, therefore, rather than to her husband, and he destroyed many letters before he wrote what he fancied suitable to the occasion. Did not the smothered tenderness, the regret, the passion, reveal itself in some of those letters, in spite of his own determination to be strictly conventional and correct? But the letter which he wrote last was stiff and commonplace enough to have satisfied the sternest moralist. "Dear Mrs. Gilbert,--I much regret that circumstances, which only came to my knowledge after your party left last night, will oblige me to leave Mordred early to-morrow morning. I am therefore compelled to forego the pleasure which I had anticipated from our friendly little dinner to-morrow evening; but pray assure Smith that the Priory is entirely at his disposal whenever he likes to come here, and that he is welcome to make it the scene of half-a-dozen fictions, if he pleases. I fear the old place will soon look gloomy and desolate enough to satisfy his ideas of the romantic, for it may be some years before I again see the Midlandshire woods and meadows." ("The dear old bridge across the waterfall, the old oak under which I have spent such pleasant hours," Mr. Lansdell had written here in one of the letters which he destroyed.) "I hope you will convey to Mr. Gilbert my warmest thanks, with the accompanying cheque, for the kindness and skill which have endeared him to my cottagers. I shall be very glad if he will continue to look after them, and I will arrange for the carrying out of any sanitary improvements he may suggest to Hodgeson, my steward. "The library will be always prepared for you whenever you feel inclined to read and study there, and the contents of the shelves will be entirely at the service of yourself and Mr. Gilbert. "With regards to your husband, and all friendly wishes for Smith's prosperity and success, "I remain, dear Mrs. Gilbert, "Yery truly yours, "ROLAND LANSDELL. _"Mordred Priory, Saturday night."_ "It may be some years before I again see the Midlandshire woods and meadows!" This sentence was the gist of the letter, the stiff unmeaning letter, which was as dull and laboured as a schoolboy's holiday missive to his honoured parents.