"Mr. Mansfield!" repeated the lady. "Was not that the name of your uncle—the one you lived with when a boy?"
"Yes, my dear, and this letter is from his only son."
"I did not know he had a son," said the lady.
"Perhaps not," remarked her husband meditatively.
He was thinking of the last time he had seen his cousin—of that terrible parting, when he had provoked the hot temper of Frank Mansfield beyond endurance, and had by him been struck to the earth. He knew he had not been blameless in that quarrel himself, although he had often tried to believe that he was. He might have done so still; but the humble, penitent tone of his cousin's letter touched him more deeply than he cared to own, even to himself.
"And this cousin has written to you after all these years?" said the lady, finding her husband did not say any more.
"Yes, my dear."
And as he spoke, Major Ferrers took up the letter again and passed into his room, locking the door after him. He wanted to be alone, to think over the strange circumstance of his cousin writing to him—his proud, imperious cousin writing such a gentle, regretful letter. He read it over again, and as he read, a strange yearning to visit his native land came over him.
He had never been to England since he left it, years before, and he had resisted all his wife's importunities to return there. But now, as he sat in the little dim hot room—dim because of the noonday sun that must be so jealously excluded—a tide of recollections rushed to his memory. He thought of the pleasant breezes and cool green lanes of Old England, and pictured the springing corn and flowering hedgerows, until the longing to see them once more grew almost painful in its intensity. After an hour spent over his cousin's letter, and the emotions and recollections it had awakened, he returned to his wife.
"What do you say to my getting leave of absence to visit England?" he said abruptly.