"We are back here," she wrote. "I am staying at Blent till my uncle comes down. I must write and say good-by to you. I dare say we shall never meet again, or merely by chance. I am very unhappy about it all, but with two people like Cecily and you nothing else could have happened. I see that now, and I'm not going to try to interfere any more. I shan't ask you to forgive me for interfering, because you've made the result quite enough punishment for anything I did wrong. And now Cecily goes about looking just like you--hard and proud and grim; and she's begun to move things about and alter arrangements at Blent. That's what brings it home to me most of all. ('And to me,' interposed Harry as he read.) If I was the sort of woman you think me, I should go on writing to you. But I shan't write again. I am going to stay at Merrion through the winter, and since you won't come here, this is the last of me for a long time anyhow. Oh, you Tristrams! Good-by, MINA ZABRISKA." "Poor little Imp!" said Harry. "She's a very good sort; and she seems about right. It's the end of everything." He paused and looked round. "Except of these rooms--and my work--and, well, life at large, you know!" He laughed in the sudden realization of how much was left after there was an end of all--life to be lived, work to be done, enjoyments to be won. He could know this, although he could hardly yet feel it in any very genuine fashion. He could project his mind forward to a future appreciation of what he could not at the moment relish; and he saw that life would be full and rich with him, even although there were an end of all. "But I don't believe," he said to himself, slowly smiling, "that I should ever have come to understand that or to--to fulfil it unless I had--what did the girl say?--done the straight thing in the end, and come out of Blent. Well, old Blent, good-by!" He crumpled up Mina's letter, and flung it into the grate. The maid-servant opened the door. "Two gentlemen to see you, sir," she said. "Oh, say I'm busy----" he began. "We must see you, please," insisted Mr Jenkinson Neeld, with unusual firmness. He turned to the man with him, saying: "Here is Mr Tristram, Colonel Edge." XXV THERE'S THE LADY TOO! There was nothing very remarkable about Colonel Wilmot Edge. He was a slightly built, trim man, but his trimness was not distinctively military. He might have been anything, save that just now the tan on his face witnessed to an out-of-door life. His manner was cold, his method of speech leisurely and methodical. At first sight Harry saw nothing in him to modify the belief in which he had grown up--that the Edges were an unattractive race, unable to appreciate Tristrams, much less worthy to mate with them. He gave the Colonel a chair rather grudgingly, and turned to old Mr Neeld for an explanation of the visit.