“You are right,” answered Mr. Burns, “and you ought to have followed my trade; I could make a good jeweller of you. This ring is worth two hundred guineas, fair market-value. But as I can ask for no one more than it is absolutely worth, I must take my profit off you: do you think that is fair?” “Perfectly,” answered Cosmo. “Then I must give you only two hundred pounds for it, and take the shillings myself. You see it may be some time before I get my money again, so I think five per cent on the amount is not more than the fair thing.” “It seems to me perfectly fair, and very moderate,” replied Cosmo. As soon as dinner was over, he sat down to write to Joan. While there was nothing that must be said, he had feared writing. This was what he wrote: “My dearest Joan, “As you have trusted me hitherto, so trust me still, and wait for an explanation of my peculiar behaviour in going away without bidding you good-by, till the proper time comes--which must come one day, for our master said, more than once, that there was nothing covered which should not be revealed, neither hid that should not be known. I feel sure therefore, of being allowed to tell you everything sometime. “I herewith send you a cheque as good as bank-notes, much safer to send, and hardly more difficult for Dr. Jermyn to turn into sovereigns. “I borrowed of him fifteen pounds--a good deal more than I wanted. I have therefore got Mr. Burns, my friend, the jeweller, in this city, to add five pounds to the two hundred which he gives for the ring, and beg you, Joan, for the sake of old times, and new also, to pay for me the fifteen pounds to Dr. Jermyn, which I would much rather owe to you than to him. The rest of it, the other ten pounds, I will pay you when I can--it may not be in this world. And in the next--what then, Joan? Why then--but for that we will wait--who more earnestly than I? “To all the coming eternity, dear Joan, I shall never cease to love you--first for yourself, then for your great lovely goodness to me. May the only perfection, whose only being is love, take you to his heart--as he is always trying to do with all of us! I mean to let him have me out and out. “Dearest Joan, Your far-off cousin, but near friend, “COSMO WARLOCK.” CHAPTER XXXVII. HOME AGAIN. Early the next day, while the sun was yet casting huge diagonal shadows across the wide street, Cosmo climbed to the roof of the Defiance coach, his heart swelling at the thought of being so soon in his father’s arms. It was a lovely summer morning, cool and dewy, fit for any Sunday--whence the eyes and mind of Cosmo turned to the remnants of night that banded the street, and from them he sank into metaphysics, chequered with the champing clank of the bits, the voices of the ostlers, passengers, and guard, and the perpendicular silence of the coachman, who sat like a statue in front of him. How dark were the shadows the sun was casting! Absurd! the sun casts no shadows--only light.