The sheep returns to the fold.
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"That is my own boy! Harry, I have never doubted you;—have never doubted that you would be right at last. Now you shall see her letter. But you must remember that she has had cause to make her unhappy."

"I will remember."

"Had you not been ill, everything would of course have been all right before now." As to the correctness of this assertion the reader probably will have doubts of his own. Then she handed him the letter, and sat on his bed-side while he read it. At first he was startled, and made almost indignant at the firmness of the girl's words. She gave him up as though it were a thing quite decided, and uttered no expression of her own regret in doing so. There was no soft woman's wail in her words. But there was in them something which made him unconsciously long to get back the thing which he had so nearly thrown away from him. They inspired him with a doubt whether he might yet succeed, which very doubt greatly increased his desire. As he read the letter for the second time, Julia became less beautiful in his imagination, and the charm of Florence's character became stronger.

"Well, dear?" said his mother, when she saw that he had finished the second reading of the epistle.

He hardly knew how to express, even to his mother, all his feelings,—the shame that he felt, and with the shame something of indignation that he should have been so repulsed. And of his love, too, he was afraid to speak. He was willing enough to give the required assurance, but after that he would have preferred to have been left alone. But his mother could not leave him without some further word of agreement between them as to the course which they would pursue.

"Will you write to her, mother, or shall I?"

"I shall write, certainly,—by to-day's post. I would not leave her an hour, if I could help it, without an assurance of your unaltered affection."

"I could go to town to-morrow, mother;—could I not?"