st sent copies of documents and of
verbal evidence which he had managed to obtain; but with the actual
details of these it is not necessary that I should trouble those who
are following me in this story. In this letter Mr. Prendergast also
recommended that some intercourse should be had with Owen Fitzgerald.
It was expedient, he said, that all the parties concerned should
recognise Owen's position as the heir presumptive to the title and
estate; and as he, he said, had found Mr. Fitzgerald of Hap House
to be forbearing, generous, and high-spirited, he thought that this
intercourse might be conducted without enmity or ill blood. And then
he suggested that Mr. Somers should see Owen Fitzgerald.

All this Herbert explained to his father gently and without
complaint; but it seemed now as though Sir Thomas had ceased to
interest himself in the matter. Such battle as it had been in his
power to make he had made to save his son's heritage and his wife's
name and happiness, even at the expense of his own conscience. That
battle had gone altogether against him, and now there was nothing
left for him but to turn his face to the wall and die. Absolute
ruin, through his fault, had come upon him and all that belonged to
him,--ruin that would now be known to the world at large; and it was
beyond his power to face that world again. In that the glory was gone
from the house of his son, and of his son's mother, the glory was
gone from his own house. He made no attempt to leave his bed, though
strongly recommended so to do by his own family doctor. And then a
physician came down from Dublin, who could only feel, whatever he
might say, how impossible it is to administer to a mind diseased. The
mind of that poor man was diseased past all curing in this world, and
there was nothing left for him but to die.

Herbert, of course, answered Clara's letter, but he did not go
over to see her during that week, nor indeed for some little time
afterwards. He answered it at considerable length, professing
his ready willingness to give back to Clara her troth, and even
recommending her, with very strong logic and unanswerable arguments
of worldly sense, to regard their union as unwise and even
impossible; but nevertheless there protruded through all his sense
and all his rhetoric, evidences of love and of a desire for love
returned, which were much more unanswerable than his arguments, and
much stronger than his logic. Clara read his letter, not as h