Yesterday there had come to him two letters from Wanley, both addressed in female hand. He knew Adela’s writing from her signature in the ‘Christian Year,’ and hastily opened the letter which came from her. The sight of the returned sonnets checked the eager flow of his blood; he was prepared for what he afterwards read.
‘Then let her meet her fate,’—so ran his thoughts when he had perused the cold note, unassociable with the Adela he imagined in its bald formality. ‘Only life can teach her.’
The other letter he suspected to be from Letty Tew, as it was.
‘DEAR MR. ELDON,—I cannot help writing a line to you, lest you should think that I did not keep my promise in the way you understood it. I did indeed. You will hear from her; she preferred to write herself, and perhaps it was better; I should only have had painful things to say. I wish to ask you to have no unkind or unjust thoughts; I scarcely think you could have. Please do not trouble to answer this, but believe me, yours sincerely,
‘L. TEW.’
‘Good little girl!’ he said to himself, smiling sadly. ‘I feel sure she did her best.’
But his pride was asserting itself, always restive under provocation. To rival with a man like Mutimer! Better that the severance with old days should be complete.
He talked it all over very frankly with his mother, who felt that her son’s destiny was not easily foreseen.
‘And what do you propose to do, Hubert?’ she asked, when they spoke of the future.
‘To study, principally art. In a fortnight I go to Rome.’