‘Ah, Sara, I wish that momentary folly would recur oftener! But there! don’t distress yourself. Remember this’–he clasped both her hands, and looked with an earnestness that was almost solemnity into her eyes–‘_wherever_ I may be, however I may be, so that I am able to move at all, one word from you will summon me back. _Here_, in this house, or wheresoever you are, is _mein Genügen_–my joy and my pleasure and contentment.’ Sara could not speak. As their eyes met, she could not tell whether it was a great joy or a great sorrow which that long, earnest look foreboded. Falkenberg stooped and kissed her forehead, said to her, ‘_Lebewohl!_’ and was gone. [Illustration] CHAPTER VII. WELLFIELD. The feelings were varied, the emotions complicated which, that spring and summer, held sway in the hearts of the household at Wellfield Abbey. At the time of Nita’s marriage, Mr. Bolton had retired to Monk’s Gate, with his _Dante_, and his books of voyages and travels; and there Avice Wellfield had been of great solace to him, as she had unconsciously betrayed in her letters to Sara. John Leyburn generously divided his attentions between Monk’s Gate and the Abbey; a plan which made little real difference in the amount of his company bestowed upon either place, for often the Abbey party would be at Monk’s Gate, or Monk’s Gate would go to the Abbey; and thus they all met nearly as much as before. At the Abbey, Nita was, as she always had been, the mistress. Jerome and Avice were the new elements. Jerome, probably by way of blunting disagreeable reflections, had taken in good earnest to business; and if he did not care to reflect upon the means by which he had arrived at his present position, he had perhaps some comfort in the knowledge that _in_ that state of life he was doing what approximated, at any rate, to his duty, so far as he knew how.