These visits seemed to afford him the greatest pleasure, though it was evident to Letty that they entailed an extraordinary effort. Each time she saw her uncle, she noted, with a sinking heart, a waning of his spirits and a wasting of his frame. He would never admit that he was ailing--and in this make-believe he was nobly supported by his wife. He had a horror of not being able to do what he had always done, and the iron will of his Dorothy, and his own frantic clinging to activity, compelled the poor, frail body to shoot and hunt as usual. The few hours he spent with Letty when he found her alone, were truly a joy and comfort to both. On these occasions, they never spoke of Hugo; but Cara the baby was exhibited, praised, and played with, and her mother made amazing efforts to seem gay. She realised, that Uncle Tom believed her to be unhappily married, and that this conviction was breaking his heart; and she strove very anxiously to play the part of a gay and contented young woman, who does not object to being a grass widow, or to be left by herself for months (to him she spoke of weeks), but the farce was a failure; the unsuccessful actress read this in her uncle’s haggard eyes, and in the long, significant pressure of his hand, ere he wished her good-bye, and sadly rode away. And one June afternoon Kitty and the Colonel rode away, never to return, for a week later Colonel Fenchurch was found sitting in his chair in the smoking-room, with Letty’s last letter in his stiffening hand, quite dead. The poor little Colonel had not much to bequeath, but by a recent will he left forty pounds a year to his beloved niece Lettice Blagdon--and not all the Fenchurch pictures, diamonds, and heirlooms, could console his bereaved widow for this unnecessary legacy. “So cruel to _me_!” she imparted in confidence to her intimates; “and so preposterous--as if Letty had not more money than she can spend!” But possibly the dead man had his reasons; perhaps he had been granted the far-sighted vision which is given to those who are nearing the border-land. His relict affected not only overwhelming grief, but the direst poverty. After the funeral, and when matters were being wound up, she endeavoured to sell a couple of hunters to Hugo. “No, by Jove!” he exclaimed, as he tossed down the letter; “I think I see myself--the bay has a spavin, the black is touched in the wind. Your aunt did me _once_,” glaring over at Letty with unpleasant significance; “but never again--once bitten, twice shy!” The thrifty lady was more successful in her transactions with her niece; to whom she submitted two tea-gowns, a driving-coat, and an opera mantle; the lot one hundred pounds. “You see,” she wrote, “I shall be in black for such an age, and I’m frightfully hard up” (she had eighteen hundred a year and expectations) “so, Letty, you really must take them off my hands. Think of all I’ve done for _you_!” and Letty was, as usual, obedient.