For sixteen years he had led this painful life of penniless splendour, in the course of which he was again left a widower with one little girl; but though his existence in his father-in-law's family had lost its only charm by this event, he was prevented from making any effort to change it, as much by his total inability to support himself elsewhere, as by consideration for the interest of his child. As she grew up, he began once more to feel that life was not altogether a bore and a burden, and at length his passive submission to years of wearying annoyance was rewarded by finding himself, at the death of the generous but tyrannical Mr. Grafton, the possessor of a handsome life income, and the sole guardian of the young heiress his daughter. It was then that, for the first time, he felt disposed to recall himself to the memory of those he had left behind him in England; and the desire to do so became so strong, that he lost no time in finally arranging his affairs in the country of his exile, and taking his departure for Europe. For the sake of having a friend as commander of the ship in which he sailed, he took his passage for Havre, and, once landed on the coast of France, he yielded to Nora's entreaties that they should pass a few weeks at Paris before they left it. His accidental meeting with Mr. Stephenson there was then related, and its consequences as it respected his daughter, and their journey home together, concluded his narration. "Your romance, Mr. Willoughby," replied Miss Compton, "appears likely to come to a very happy conclusion ... but I confess I wonder that never during your sixteen years of what appears to have been very perfect leisure, you could never have found time to make any single inquiry about your little Agnes." "And I wonder at it too, Miss Compton ... but it is more easy to recal the feelings that led to this, than to explain them. I believe that the total impossibility of my transmitting any share of the wealth amidst which I lived to a child whom I had great reason to fear might want it, was the primary cause of it ... and then came the hope that at no very distant day my inquiries for her might be made in a manner less torturing to my feelings than by acknowledging myself to be alive, in circumstances of high-fed pauperism, without the power of relieving any wants, however pressing, with which my inquiries might happen to make me acquainted. Had I known that you, Miss Compton, had adopted my little girl, I should not so long have suffered her to believe me dead, because I had not the power of making my being alive a source of joy to her."