"Now I suppose I have gone to the other extreme, because, let me tell you what I've done. Will you laugh? I can't help it if you do; I've bought a house! What do you think of that? "The owner took back a mortgage, but I don't care. I paid so _very_ little for it, and thirty acres of woods and fields--and it is a darling house!--built in the eighteenth century and not in good repair, but it's mine! mine! mine!--and it may need paint and plumbing and all sorts of things which perhaps make for human happiness and perhaps do not. But I tell you I really don't care. "And how I did it was this: I took what they offered for my laces and jewels--about a third of their value--but it paid every debt and left me with enough to buy my sweet old house up here. "But that's not all! I've rented my town house furnished for a term of five years at seven thousand dollars a year! Isn't it wonderful? "And _that_ is not all, either. I am going into business, Rix! Don't dare laugh. Jim has made an arrangement with an independent New York florist, and I'm going to grow flowers under glass for the Metropolitan market. "And, if I succeed, I _may_ try fruits outdoors and in. My small brain is humming with schemes, millions of them. Isn't it heavenly? "Besides, from my second-story windows I shall be able to see Molly's chimneys above the elms. And Molly is going to remain here all winter, because, Rix--and this is a close secret--a little heir or heiress is coming to make _this_ House of Wycherly 'an habitation enforced'--and a happier habitation than it has been since they bought it. "So you see I shall have neighbours all winter--two neighbours, for Mrs. Ledwith is wretchedly ill and her physicians have advised her to remain here all winter. Poor child--for she is nothing else, Rix--I met her for the first time when I went to call on Mrs. Sprowl. She's so young and so empty-headed, just a shallow, hare-brained, little thing who had no more moral idea of sin than a humming-bird--nor perhaps has she any now except that the world has hurt her and broken her wings and damaged her plumage; and the sunlight in which she sparkled for a summer has faded to a chill gray twilight!--Oh, Rix, it is really pitiful; and somehow I can't seem to remember whether she was guilty or not, because she's so ill, so broken--lying here amid the splendour of her huge house---- "You know Mrs. Sprowl is on her way to Carlsbad. You haven't written me what took place in your last interview with her; and I've asked you, twice. Won't you tell me? "Langly, thank goodness, never disturbs us. And, Rix, do you know that he has never been to call on Mary Ledwith? He keeps to his own estate and nobody even sees him. Which is all I ask at any rate.