ek, I think. We shall go to an hotel, of course. She's never
seen London since she was a child.'

'She won't come to Highbury?'

'No. I shall avoid that somehow. You'll have to come and see us at the
hotel. We'll go to the theatre together one night.'

'What about 'Arry?'

'I don't know. I shall think about it.'

Digesting much at his ease, Richard naturally became dreamful.

'I may have to take a house for a time now and then,' he said.

'In London?'

He nodded.

'I mustn't forget you, you see, Princess. Of course you'll come here
sometimes, but that's not much good. In London I dare say I can get you
to know some of the right kind of people. I want Adela to be thick with
the Westlakes; then your chance'll come. See, old woman?'

Alice, too, dreamed.

'I wonder you don't want me to marry a Socialist working man,' she said
presently, as if twitting him playfully.

'You don't understand. One of the things we aim at is to remove the
distinction between classes. I want you to marry one of those they call
gentlemen. And you shall too, Alice!'

'Well, but I'm not a working girl now, Dick.'

He laughed, and said it was time to go to bed.

The same evening conversation continued to a late hour between Hubert
Eldon and his mother. Hubert was returning to London the next morning.

Yesterday there had come to him two letters from Wanley, both addressed
in female hand. He knew Adela's writing from her signature in the
'Christian Year,' and hastily opened the letter which came from her. The
sight of the returned sonnets checked the eager flow of his blood; he
was prepared for what he afterwards read.

'Then let her meet her fate,'--so ran his thoughts when he had perused
the cold note, unassociable with the Adela he imagined in its bald
formality. 'Only life can teach her.'

The other letter he suspected to be from Letty Tew, as it was.

'DEAR MR. ELDON,--I cannot help writing a line to you, lest you should
think that I did not keep my promise in the way you understood it. I
did indeed. You will hear from her; she preferred to write herself, and
perhaps it was better; I should only have had painful things to say. I
wish to ask you to have no unkind or unjust thoughts; I scarcely think
you could have. Please do not trouble to answer this, but believe me,
yours sincerely,

'L. TEW.'

'Good little girl!' he said to himself, smiling sadly. 'I feel sure she
did her best.'

But his pride was asserting itself,