He had only a couple of days left before he was to start for Pernambuco, where he had heard of work that was likely to suit him. He had made his arrangements, taken his passage in the steerage: he had nothing to do now but to write a farewell letter to Mr. Heron, telling him whither he was bound, and another--should he write that other or should he not?--to Elizabeth. He felt it hard to go without saying one last farewell to her. The discovery that she was the heiress of his property had finally decided him to leave England. He dared not risk the chance of being recognised and identified, if such recognition and identification would lead to her poverty. For even if, by a deed of gift in his supposed name of Brian Luttrell, he devised his wealth to her, he knew that she would never consent to take it if he were still alive. The doubt thrown on his birth and parentage would not be conclusive enough in her mind to justify her in despoiling him of what all the judges in the land would have said was his birthright. But then Brian did not know that Vincenza Vasari had been found. The existence of another claimant to the Luttrell estate never troubled him in the least. He wronged nobody, he thought, by allowing Elizabeth Murray to suppose that Brian Luttrell was dead. He wrote a few lines to Mr. Heron, thanking him for his kindness, and informing him that he was leaving England for South America; and then he proceeded to the more difficult task of writing to Elizabeth. He destroyed many sheets of paper, and spent a great deal of time in the attempt, although the letter, as it stood at last, was a very simple affair, scarcely worthy of the pains that had been bestowed upon it. "Dear Miss Murray," he wrote, "when you receive this note I shall have left England, but I cannot go without one word of farewell. You will never know how much you did for me in those early days of our acquaintance in Italy; how much hope you gave me back, how much interest in life you inspired in me; but for all that you did I thank you. Is it too much to ask you to remember me sometimes? I shall remember you until the hour of my death. Forgive me if I have said too much. God bless you, Elizabeth! Let me write that name once, for I shall never write to you nor see your face again." He put no signature. He could not bear to use a false name when he wrote to her; and he was sure that she would know from whom the letter came. He went out and dropped it with his own hands into a letter-box; then he came back to his dreary lodgings, never expecting to find there anything of interest. But he found something that interested him very much indeed. He found a long and closely written letter from the Prior of San Stefano.