It was during the time of Anna's sojourn at Dieppe that Drelincourt, when on his way back from London, whither some law business had taken him, made a detour on purpose to see his sister and spend a week with her. He had exiled himself from England, preferring to live abroad, chiefly in Italy, the climate of which seemed to suit both him and his wife, but now and then wintering in Egypt or elsewhere. But although he and Anna saw so little of each other, he wrote to her regularly once a month, and his letters, chatty, vivacious, and stuffed with news and gossip of one kind or another, made one of the chief pleasures of her quiet existence. They were the sole link between her and that great, restless, seething world outside her about which she knew so little, and from any closer contact with which she was kept by her constitutional timidity and that distaste for mixing in general society which she found it quite impossible to overcome. But latterly--that is to say, within the last twelve months or so--the dread shadow which for so long a time had brooded over her life had been penetrated by a ray of sunlight which was gradually broadening and brightening, so that it seemed as if, at no very distant date, Dr. Pounceby's prediction that, in the course of time, Anna would outgrow her mental malady, was on the eve of fulfilment. For some time past each recurrent attack had been of shorter duration than the preceding one, so that now, instead of extending over twelve days or a fortnight, as used to be the case, they lasted for two or three days only; and there was every reason for hoping that in the course of another year or two they would leave her altogether. Mrs. Jenwyn had few living relatives, and only one with whom she kept up anything like a regular correspondence. The person in question was a first cousin, Martin Soanes by name, whose position in life was that of managing clerk to a London solicitor in a large way of business. From Mr. Soanes, when she had been about six months at Guernsey, she one day received a letter, the contents of which proved to be of a sufficiently startling kind. In it her cousin informed her that, in consequence of an advertisement he had come across in the _Times_, he had called upon a certain firm in his own line of business, and, on making himself known to them, was told that the person advertised for had, through the death of an uncle in Australia, become entitled to a bequest of twenty two thousand pounds. That fortunate person was none other than herself, Henrietta Jenwyn, _née_ Henrietta Wynter, daughter of so and so. Finally, Mr. Soanes wrote, her presence was desired in London as speedily as possible, with the view of enabling her to prove her identity.