Amelius laid the letter aside, touched and saddened by the artless devotion to him which it expressed. He was conscious also of a feeling of uneasy surprise, when he read the lines which referred to his possible entanglement with some beautiful English girl. Here, with widely different motives, was Mrs. Farnaby’s warning repeated, by a stranger writing from another quarter of the globe! It was an odd coincidence, to say the least of it. After thinking for a while, he turned abruptly to the third letter that was waiting for him. He was not at ease; his mind felt the need of relief. The third letter was from Rufus Dingwell; announcing the close of his tour in Ireland, and his intention of shortly joining Amelius in London. The excellent American expressed, with his customary absence of reserve, his fervent admiration of Irish hospitality, Irish beauty, and Irish whisky. “Green Erin wants but one thing more,” Rufus predicted, “to be a Paradise on earth--it wants the day to come when we shall send an American minister to the Irish Republic.” Laughing over this quaint outbreak, Amelius turned from the first page to the second. As his eyes fell on the next paragraph, a sudden change passed over him; he let the letter drop on the floor. “One last word,” the American wrote, “about that nice long bright letter of yours. I have read it with strict attention, and thought over it considerably afterwards. Don’t be riled, friend Amelius, if I tell you in plain words, that your account of the Farnabys doesn’t make me happy--quite the contrary, I do assure you. My back is set up, sir, against that family. You will do well to drop them; and, above all things, mind what you are about with the brown miss, who has found her way to your favourable opinion in such an almighty hurry. Do me a favour, my good boy. Just wait till I have seen her, will you?” Mrs. Farnaby, Mellicent, Rufus--all three strangers to each other; and all three agreed nevertheless in trying to part him from the beautiful young Englishwoman! “I don’t care,” Amelius thought to himself “They may say what they please--I’ll marry Regina, if she will have me!” BOOK THE FOURTH. LOVE AND MONEY CHAPTER 1 In an interval of no more than three weeks what events may not present themselves? what changes may not take place? Behold Amelius, on the first drizzling day of November, established in respectable lodgings, at a moderate weekly rent. He stands before his small fireside, and warms his back with an Englishman’s severe sense of enjoyment. The cheap looking-glass on the mantelpiece reflects the head and shoulders of a new Amelius. His habits are changed; his social position is in course of development. Already, he is a strict economist. Before long, he expects to become a married man.