king! The Asshlins are all
disgustingly proud.

"I can see you smile as you read this, and perhaps I can hear you
say: 'How like Clo!' I hope--oh, Larry, I hope I can!

"Give them all my love--Hannah, Burke, the dogs, and Polly. Dear,
pretty Polly! How I crave sometimes for just one long, wild gallop.
She must be eight years old by now; and yet she looks as fit as
ever--you said so in your letter of a month ago. Dear, pretty
Polly!

"I can do very much as I like now, Larry, in every way. James has
been more than generous. I am to have the interest on sixty
thousand pounds, although I may not touch the capital. A wise
precaution. Was there ever an Asshlin who could keep money? But, as
it is, I shall be rich. Two thousand pounds a year! Why, it is
wealth. And then again there is another thing in which James has
been good to us. He has placed a thousand pounds to my credit,
apart from my own money, which I am to give to Nance on her
twenty-first birthday, or on her engagement, should she marry with
my consent before she comes of age. Was it not a kindly, thoughtful
act? But does it not seem incredible to talk about Nance--little
Nance--being of an age when she might think of marrying? I often
long to see her--and sometimes I feel ridiculously shy and a little
bit afraid; it is so strange that we have never in all these years
visited England, and that some plan of poor James's should always
have prevented her spending her holidays with us--though, so far as
that goes, Carrigmore was a more homelike place than Italy to spend
them in.

"What is she really like? You say she has grown very pretty, but
you never say more than that. Men don't realise how women crave for
details. But I shall see her for myself in a few weeks. She leaves
school next month, you know, and will join me at once. Before
James's death she had been asked on a visit to America by the
mother of a school friend of hers--a girl named Estcoit, who is
leaving school on the same day as Nance. But now that is all
changed. She writes begging me to let her come to me directly; and
her letter has made me know that, beneath all the silly feelings of
shyness and uncertainty, I too want her.

"So now I have said all. Now you see me as I am, Larry--more the
old Clodagh than I have been for years. The Clodagh who re