Cecil left the drawing-room early that evening, in order to write some letters in her own apartment. She wrote a long gossiping epistle to her husband, telling him of the Pevenshall gaieties, the pending amateur theatricals, any thing and every thing which she thought likely to interest him, just for the few minutes during which he read her letter. It was not because the great barrister was busy and could only write brief scrawls to his wife that she should therefore curtail her letters to him. She was so earnestly anxious to do her duty--even if duty was now and then a little tiresome. "And yet I doubt whether he will be able to take his mind away from all that horrible law-business, even while he reads my letter," she thought, as she concluded her missive. In the course of the letter she had expressed her desire to return to London. "I am amongst very pleasant people here, but do not like to stay so long away from home," she wrote, and she gave a faint sigh as she wrote the word "home;" "and as you find it impossible to join me here, I think I had better return to Brunswick Square early next week. You wished me to have change of air and scene; and any benefit I am likely to receive from them I have already secured. You know how little I care for gaiety, and how very comfortable I am with my books and piano. Let me have a line please, dear Laurence, by return of post, to say I may come back at the beginning of the week." Florence peeped into her friend's room before retiring for the night, and Cecil told her of the letter she had been writing. "I think if Mr. O'Boyneville cannot come down, I must go back to London next week, dear," she said. But Florence declared such an arrangement utterly impossible. "You have come to me, and I mean to keep you," she said. "You come here for change of scene, and then you talk of running back to that hideous Bloomsbury after a fortnight, and you even talk of going before our comedy. It is positively preposterous. Ah, I ought to have insisted on your taking a part in it. But I shall write to Mr. O'Boyneville myself if you are rebellious, and ask him to put his veto against your return." "But, my dear Florence, you must know that I ought not to be so long away from home." "I know nothing of the kind. In the last letter you showed me, Mr. O'Boyneville said he was delighted to think you were enjoying yourself here, and that he was up to his eyes in business. What can a man who is up to his eyes in business want with a wife?"