and final in Richard's plain
and practical words.

Evidently a great change had come in my life, and I could not help it if
I would. I could not but feel the separation from the person upon whom I
had leaned so long, and who had done everything for me, and I knew this
separation was to be a final one; Richard's words left no doubt of that.

"What you'd better do," he said, leaning by the mantelpiece, "is to tell
the servants about this--this--change in your plans, to-morrow; unpack,
and settle the house to stay here for the present. In the course of a
couple of months it will be time enough to make up your mind about where
you will live. I think, till the will is admitted and all that, you had
better keep things as they are, and make no change."

He had been so used to thinking for me, that he could not give it up at
once. "I will tell Sophie to-morrow," he went on. "It will not be
necessary for you to see her if she should come before she hears of it
from me." (Sophie had an engagement with me to go out on the following
morning. He seemed to to have forgotten nothing.)

"What will Sophie think of me?" I said, with my eyes on the floor.
"Richard, it looks very bad for me; when I was poor, I was going to
marry you, and now that I have money left me, I am going to break
it off."

"What difference does it make how it looks," he said, "when you know you
have done right? I will tell Sophie the truth, that it was my doing both
times, and that you only yielded to my judgment in the matter. Besides,
if she judges you harshly, it need not make much matter to you. You will
never again be thrown intimately with her, I suppose."

"No, I suppose not," I said faintly. I was being turned out of my world
very fast, and it was not very clear what I was going to get in exchange
for it (except freedom).

"I will send you up money to-morrow morning," he went on, "to pay the
servants, and all that. The clerk I shall send it by, is the one that I
shall put in charge of your matters. You can always draw on him for
money, or ask him any questions, or call on him for any service, in case
I should be away, or ill, or anything."

"You are going away?" I said interrogatively.

"It is possible, for a while--I don't know. I haven't made up my mind
definitely about what I am going to do. But in case I _should_ be away,
I mean, you are to call on him."

"I understand."

"Anything he tells you, about signing papers, and such things, you m