e to read
and ponder over that letter, though it was not a lengthy one. This was
what Frank Lavender had written to his aunt:

"MY DEAR AUNT LAVENDER: I suppose when you read this you will think I
am in a bad temper because of what you said to me. It is not so. But
I am leaving London, and I wish to hand over to you, before I go, the
charge of my house, and to ask you to take possession of everything
in it that does not belong to Sheila. These things are yours, as you
know, and I have to thank you very much for the loan of them. I have
to thank you for the far too liberal allowance you have made me for
many years back. Will you think I have gone mad if I ask you to stop
that now? The fact is, I am going to have a try at earning something,
for the fun of the thing; and, to make the experiment satisfactory,
I start to-morrow morning for a district in the West Highlands, where
the most ingenious fellow I know couldn't get a penny loaf on credit.
You have been very good to me, Aunt Lavender: I wish I had made a
better use of your kindness. So good-bye just now, and if ever I come
back to London again I shall call on you and thank you in person.

"I am your affectionate nephew,

"FRANK LAVENDER."

So far the letter was almost business-like. There was no reference
to the causes which were sending him away from London, and which had
already driven him to this extraordinary resolution about the money
he got from his aunt. But at the end of the letter there was a brief
postscript, apparently written at the last moment, the words of which
were these: "Be kind to Sheila. Be as kind to her as I have been cruel
to her. In going away from her I feel as though I were exiled by man
and forsaken by God."

She came back from the window the letter in her hand.

"I think you may read it too, papa," she said, for she was anxious
that her father should know that Lavender had voluntarily surrendered
this money before he was deprived of it. Then she went back to the
window.

The slow rain fell from the dismal skies on the pavement and the
railings and the now almost leafless trees. The atmosphere was filled
with a thin white mist, and the people going by were hidden under
umbrellas. It was a dreary picture enough; and yet Sheila was thinking
of how much drearier such a day would be on some lonely coast in the
North, with the hills obscured behind the rain, and the sea beating
hopelessly on the sand. She thought of some small and damp