"I'll go down and take dinner with them," he decided: then he read the letter:-- "DEAR MARK, "After what happened a little while ago you cannot be surprised if I say I will not marry you. There is nothing to be said about it except that I have quite made up my mind. I have thought about it ever since, and not done nothing in a hurry. We would not suit one another, and the older we grew, the worse we should quarrel. So it will be better to part before any harm is done. You will easily find a quieter sort of girl, without so much spirit as me. And she will suit you better than what I do. I have told my mother that I am not going to marry you. And Mr. Nathan Baskerville, your own uncle, though he is very sorry indeed about it, is our family friend and adviser, and he says it is better we understand and part at once. I hope you won't make any fuss, as _nothing will change me_. And you will have the pleasure of knowing your father will be thankful. No doubt you will soon find a better-looking and nicer girl than me, and somebody that your father won't treat the same as he treated "Yours truly, "CORA LINTERN." Through the man's stunned grief and above the chaos of his thoughts, one paramount and irrevocable conviction reigned. Cora meant what she wrote, and nothing that he had power to say or to do would win her back again. She would never change; she had seen him in anger and the sight had determined her; she had met his father and had felt that such antagonism must ruin her life. He possessed imagination and was able swiftly to feel what life must mean without her. He believed that his days would be impossible henceforth. He read the letter again and marked how she began with restraint and gradually wrote herself into anger. She smarted when she reflected on his father; and he soon convinced himself that it was his father who had driven her to these conclusions. He told himself that he did not blame her. The pipe in his mouth had been given to him by Cora. He emptied it now, put it into its case, rose up and went home. He planned the things to say to his father and determined to show him the letter. Mark desired to make his father suffer, and did not doubt but that he would suffer when this catastrophe came to his ears. Then his father appeared before him, far off, driven by the wind; and Mark, out of his tortured mind, marvelled to think that a thing so small as this dim spot, hastening like a dead leaf along, should have been powerful enough, and cruel enough, deliberately to ruin his life. For he was now obsessed by the belief that his father alone must be thanked for the misfortune. They came together, and Humphrey shouted to be heard against the riot of the wind. His hat was pressed over his ears; the tails of his coat and the hair on his head leapt and danced; his eyes were watering. "A brave wind! Might blow sense into a man, if anything could. What are you doing up here?"