. Julius is going to amend the library catalogue with me, and
there are those chests of deeds, and order-books, and diaries, which
really ought to be looked over. As it appears pretty certain I shall be
the last of the race, it would be only civil, I think, to bestow a
little of my ample leisure upon my forefathers, and set down some more
or less comprehensive account of them and their doings. They appear to
have been given to rather dramatic adventures.--Don't you worry, you
dear sweet! As I say, let me hybernate until the birds of passage come
and the young leaves are green in the spring. Then, when the days grow
long and bright, the sea will begin to call again, and, when it calls,
you and I will pack and go."

And Katherine yielded, being convinced that Richard could treat his own
case best. If healing, complete and radical, was to be affected, it
must come from within and not from without. Her wisdom was to wait in
faith. There was much that had never been told, and never would be
told. Much which had not been explained, and never would be explained.
For, notwithstanding the very gracious relation existing between
herself and Richard, Katherine realised that there were blank spaces
not only in her knowledge of his past action, but in her knowledge of
the sentiments which now animated him. As from a far country his mind,
she perceived, often traveled to meet hers. "There was a door to which
she found no key." But Katherine, happily, could respect the
individuality even of her best beloved. Unlike the majority of her sex
she was incapable of intrusion, and did not make affection an excuse
for familiarity. Love, in her opinion, enjoins obligation of service,
rather than confers rights of examination and direction. She had
learned the condition in which his servants had found Richard, in the
opera box of the great theatre at Naples, lying upon the floor
unconscious, his face disfigured, cut, and bleeding. But what had
produced this condition, whether accident or act of violence, she had
not learned. She had also learned that her niece, Helen de Vallorbes,
had stayed at the villa just before the commencement of Richard's
illness--he merely passing his days there, and spending his nights on
board the yacht in the harbour, where, no doubt, that same illness had
been contracted. But she resisted the inclination to attempt further
discovery. She even resisted the inclination to speculate regarding all
this. What Richard mig