of heaven!'

'Or for the sake of your own share therein, my poor cousin!' thought
Lancelot to himself, 'which is a very different matter.'

'Whither, after you have been--?' Luke could not get out the word
home.

'To Claude Mellot's.'

'I will walk part of the way thither with you. But he is a very bad
companion for you.'

'I can't help that. I cannot live; and I am going to turn painter.
It is not the road in which to find a fortune; but still, the very
sign-painters live somehow, I suppose. I am going this very
afternoon to Claude Mellot, and enlist. I sold the last of my
treasured MSS. to a fifth-rate magazine this morning, for what it
would fetch. It has been like eating one's own children--but, at
least, they have fed me. So now "to fresh fields and pastures
new."'

CHAPTER XV: DEUS E MACHINA

When Lancelot reached the banker's a letter was put into his hand;
it bore the Whitford postmark, and Mrs. Lavington's handwriting. He
tore it open; it contained a letter from Argemone, which, it is
needless to say, he read before her mother's:--

'My beloved! my husband!--Yes--though you may fancy me fickle and
proud--I will call you so to the last; for were I fickle, I could
have saved myself the agony of writing this; and as for pride, oh!
how that darling vice has been crushed out of me! I have rolled at
my mother's feet with bitter tears, and vain entreaties--and been
refused; and yet I have obeyed her after all. We must write to each
other no more. This one last letter must explain the forced silence
which has been driving me mad with fears that you would suspect me.
And now you may call me weak; but it is your love which has made me
strong to do this--which has taught me to see with new intensity my
duty, not only to you, but to every human being--to my parents. By
this self-sacrifice alone can I atone to them for all my past
undutifulness. Let me, then, thus be worthy of you. Hope that by
this submission we may win even her to change. How calmly I write!
but it is only my hand that is calm. As for my heart, read
Tennyson's Fatima, and then know how I feel towards you! Yes, I
love you--madly, the world would say. I seem to understand now how
women have died of love. Ay, that indeed would be blessed; for then
my spirit would seek out yours, and hover over it for ever!
Farewell, beloved! and let me hear of you through your deeds. A
feeling at m