is useless
to go back to Limmeridge till there is an absolute necessity for our
return.

24th.--Sad news by this morning's post. The expedition to Central
America sailed on the twenty-first. We have parted with a true man--we
have lost a faithful friend. Water Hartright has left England.

25th.--Sad news yesterday--ominous news to-day. Sir Percival Glyde has
written to Mr. Fairlie, and Mr. Fairlie has written to Laura and me, to
recall us to Limmeridge immediately.

What can this mean? Has the day for the marriage been fixed in our
absence?

II

LIMMERIDGE HOUSE.

November 27th.--My forebodings are realised. The marriage is fixed for
the twenty-second of December.

The day after we left for Polesdean Lodge Sir Percival wrote, it seems,
to Mr. Fairlie, to say that the necessary repairs and alterations in
his house in Hampshire would occupy a much longer time in completion
than he had originally anticipated. The proper estimates were to be
submitted to him as soon as possible, and it would greatly facilitate
his entering into definite arrangements with the workpeople, if he
could be informed of the exact period at which the wedding ceremony
might be expected to take place. He could then make all his
calculations in reference to time, besides writing the necessary
apologies to friends who had been engaged to visit him that winter, and
who could not, of course, be received when the house was in the hands
of the workmen.

To this letter Mr. Fairlie had replied by requesting Sir Percival
himself to suggest a day for the marriage, subject to Miss Fairlie's
approval, which her guardian willingly undertook to do his best to
obtain. Sir Percival wrote back by the next post, and proposed (in
accordance with his own views and wishes from the first?) the latter
part of December--perhaps the twenty-second, or twenty-fourth, or any
other day that the lady and her guardian might prefer. The lady not
being at hand to speak for herself, her guardian had decided, in her
absence, on the earliest day mentioned--the twenty-second of December,
and had written to recall us to Limmeridge in consequence.

After explaining these particulars to me at a private interview
yesterday, Mr. Fairlie suggested, in his most amiable manner, that I
should open the necessary negotiations to-day. Feeling that resistance
was useless, unless I could first obtain Laura's authority to make it,
I consented to speak to her, but decla