I know that the housekeeper has received a letter from your aunt this very week, in which she incidentally mentions that all are well, and in the same place as before.

How then can I excuse you?
'Then write, Paula, or at least telegraph, as you proposed.

Otherwise I am resolved to take your silence as a signal to treat your fair words as wind, and to write to you no more.' III.
He despatched the letter, and half-an-hour afterwards felt sure that it would mortally offend her.

But he had now reached a state of temporary indifference, and could contemplate the loss of such a tantalizing property with reasonable calm.
In the interim of waiting for a reply he was one day walking to Markton, when, passing Myrtle Villa, he saw Sir William De Stancy ambling about his garden-path and examining the crocuses that palisaded its edge.

Sir William saw him and asked him to come in.