There was also a letter for him. She struggled against the desire to open it, and conquered it for that night. The next morning, however, the temptation was too strong for her, and she steamed it open. It was from a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh to say that the late Miss Janet Fourmy had left René the residue of her estate, which, after certain small legacies had been paid, would amount to nearly four thousand pounds. The house in Scotland would also be his, and all the deceased lady's personal effects. Ann went to her work that day shivering with excitement. René's enormous wealth frightened her. She could put up a fight against his intelligence, his brooding, his silence; but against this she felt powerless, and knew within her heart that her battle was already lost. She was a forewoman now, and she gave the girls under her the worst day they ever remembered. BOOK THREE CATHLEEN BENTLEY So between them love did shine That the truth saw his right Flaming in the phoenix' sight, Either was the other's mine. Property was thus appalled That the self was not the same; Single nature's double name Neither two nor one was called. I MEETING He trieth the sea after many shipwrecks; and beats still on that door which he never saw opened. WHEN Ann and Kilner left René, he was filled with anger against them, first of all, fleetingly, with the petulance of a sick man at being left alone without his having expressed a wish for it, and then at their treating him as a sick man when he was nothing of the kind, but only passing through a crisis in which not even sympathy could help him much. Kilner was so cocksure just because he had a peculiar delight in putting paint on canvas; and Ann--poor dear little Ann!--she loved to have things and people at her mercy and to keep them there. And she could make no attempt to understand them, because if she did so, that would be to believe in them and let them be free to work out their own destiny. He knew how little freedom she would even grant himself, and his mind, spurred by revolt into high activity, went straight to its mark, the place where freedom most clearly promised--absurdly, the door through which he had seen Rachel Bentley pass. That led to his clearest and most beautiful memory, the days in Scotland, the happy boyhood when delight had grown from year to year, to flower at last in the coming of Cathleen. Very vivid was his recollection of their first meeting in his aunt's house: himself very coltish and shy, she charmingly self-conscious and alert. It was the first year the Bentleys had taken the big house, and she had come round by the road. His aunt had asked him to show Cathleen the short cut through the woods. She chattered until his shyness overcame him, and then they walked in a miserable silence. He comforted himself by regarding her as a little girl, which to his young prudishness made