In the meantime, I need only tell you that Andrew and Michael never again met--never again communicated, even by writing.
To all intents and purposes they were dead to each other, from those early days to the present time.
"You can now estimate what Andrew's position was when he left his profession and returned to England.

Possessed of a fortune, h e was alone in the world; his future destroyed at the fair outset of life; his mother and brother estranged from him; his sister lately married, with interests and hopes in which he had no share.

Men of firmer mental caliber might have found refuge from such a situation as this in an absorbing intellectual pursuit.

He was not capable of the effort; all the strength of his character lay in the affections he had wasted.

His place in the world was that quiet place at home, with wife and children to make his life happy, which he had lost forever.