So he spent a tranquil happy winter, and wrote of his happiness and his tranquillity to Lady Caroline and Daphne and Ida and me; and before he knew where he was, or we, the almond-trees blossomed again, and then the lilacs and limes and horse-chestnuts and syringas; and the fireflies flew in and out of his bedroom at night, and the many nightingales made such music in the Hof gardens that he could scarcely sleep for them; and other nightingales came to make music for him too--most memorable music! Stockhausen, Jenny Ney, Joachim, Madame Schumann; for the triennial Musik festival was held in Düsseldorf that year (a month later than usual); and musical festivals are things they manage uncommonly well in Germany. Barty, unseen and unheard, as becomes a chorus-singer, sang in the choruses of Gluck's _Iphigenia_, and heard and saw everything for nothing. But, before this, Captain Reece came back to Riffrath, and, according to appointment, Admiral Royce and Lady Jane, and Julia, lovelier than ever; and all the sweetness she was so full of rose in her heart and gathered in her eyes as they once more looked on Barty Josselin. He steeled and stiffened himself like a man who knew that the divine Julias of this world were for his betters--not for him! Nevertheless, as he went to bed, and thought of the melting gaze that had met his, he was deeply stirred; and actually, though the north was in him, he forgot, for the first time in all that twelvemonth, for the first time since that terrible night in Malines, to say his prayers to Martia--and next morning he found a letter by his bedside in pencil-written blaze of his own handwriting: "Barty my Beloved,--A crisis has come in your affairs, which are mine; and, great as the cost is to me, I must write again, at the risk of betraying what amounts to a sacred trust; a secret that I have innocently surprised, the secret of a noble woman's heart. "One of the richest girls in England, one of the healthiest and most beautiful women in the whole world, a bride fit for an emperor, is yours for the asking. It is my passionate wish, and a matter of life and death to me, that you and Julia Royce should become man and wife; when you are, you shall both know why. "Mr. Nobody of Nowhere--as you are so fond of calling yourself--you shall be such, some day, that the best and highest in the land will be only too proud to be your humble friends and followers; no woman is too good for you--only one good enough! and she loves you: of that I feel sure--and it is impossible you should not love her back again.