“No,” he answered, with some temper.

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Sarah nodded at Ulfar, and said softly: “The absent must be satisfied with the second place. However, if you have quarrelled with her, Ulfar, turn over a new leaf. I found that out when poor Sandys was alive. People who have to live together must blot a leaf now and then with their little tempers. The only thing is to turn over a new one.”

“If anything unpleasant happens to me,” said Ulfar, “I try to bury it.”

“You cannot do it. The past is a ghost not to be laid; and a past which is buried alive, it is terrible.” It was Sarah who spoke, and with a sombre earnestness not in keeping with her usual character. There was a minute’s pregnant silence, and it was broken by the entrance of a servant with a letter. He gave it to Ulfar.

It was Aspatria’s sorrowful, questioning note. Written while Brune waited, it was badly written, incorrectly constructed and spelled, and generally untidy. It had the same effect upon Ulfar that a badly dressed, untidy woman would have had. 61 He was ashamed of the irregular, childish scrawl. He did not take the trouble to put himself in the atmosphere in which the anxious, sorrowful words had been written. He crushed the paper in his hand with much the same contemptuous temper with which Elizabeth had seen him treat a dunning letter. She knew, however, that this letter was from Aspatria, and, saying something about her father, she went into an adjoining room, and left Ulfar and Sarah together. She thought Sarah would be the proper alterative.

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The first words Sir Thomas Fenwick uttered regarded Aspatria. Turning his head feebly, he asked: “Has Ulfar quarrelled with Miss Anneys? I hear nothing of her lately.”

“I think he is tired of his fancy for her. There is no quarrel.”

“She was a good girl,—eh? Kindhearted, beautiful,—eh, Elizabeth?”

“She certainly was.”

He said no more then; but at midnight, when Ulfar was sitting beside him, he 62 called his son, and spoke to him on the subject. “I am going—almost gone—the way of all flesh, Ulfar. Take heed of my last words. You promised to make Miss Anneys your wife,—eh?”

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