In sum, nothing would come of all our talk but the assurance that the volume was equally irrecoverable with the sword, and indeed with my poor character--at least, in the eyes of my immediate neighbours. [Illustration: I SAT DOWN AGAIN BY THE FIRE TO READ, IN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S CHAIR.] CHAPTER XLVII. THE LETTERS AND THEIR STORY. As soon as Charley went to bed, I betook myself to my grandmother’s room, in which, before discovering my loss, I had told Styles to kindle a fire. I had said nothing to Charley about my ride, and the old church, and the marriage-register. For the time, indeed, I had almost lost what small interest I had taken in the matter--my new bereavement was so absorbing and painful; but feeling certain, when he left me, that I should not be able to sleep, but would be tormented all night by innumerable mental mosquitoes if I made the attempt, and bethinking me of my former resolution, I proceeded to carry it out. The fire was burning brightly, and my reading lamp was on the table, ready to be lighted. But I sat down first in my grandmother’s chair and mused for I know not how long. At length my wandering thoughts rehearsed again the excursion with Mr Coningham. I pulled the copy of the marriage-entry from my pocket, and in reading it over again, my curiosity was sufficiently roused to send me to the bureau. I lighted my lamp at last, unlocked what had seemed to my childhood a treasury of unknown marvels, took from it the packet of yellow withered letters, and sat down again by the fire to read, in my great-grandmother’s chair, the letters of Wilfrid Cumbermede Daryll--for so he signed himself in all of them--my great-grandfather. There were amongst them a few of her own in reply to his--badly written and badly spelt, but perfectly intelligible. I will not transcribe any of them--I have them to show if needful--but not at my command at the present moment;--for I am writing neither where I commenced my story--on the outskirts of an ancient city, nor at the Moat, but in a dreary old square in London; and those letters lie locked again in the old bureau, and have lain unvisited through thousands of desolate days and slow creeping nights, in that room which I cannot help feeling sometimes as if the ghost of that high-spirited, restless-hearted grandmother of mine must now and then revisit, sitting in the same old chair, and wondering to find how far it was all receded from her--wondering, also, to think what a work she made, through her long and weary life, about things that look to her now such trifles. I do not then transcribe any of the letters, but give, in a connected form, what seem to me the facts I gathered from them; not hesitating to present, where they are required, self-evident conclusions as if they were facts mentioned in them. I repeat that none of my names are real, although they all point at the real names.