With an old lawyer like me, and an old soldier like him, and a real old gentlewoman like Miss MacKelpie, who loves the very ground he walks on, to look after him, together with all his own fine qualities and his marvellous experience of the world, and the gigantic wealth that will surely be his, that young man will go far.
_Letter from Rupert Sent Leger to Miss Janet MacKelpie_, _Croom_.
_January_ 5, 1907.
MY DEAREST AUNT JANET, It is all over--the first stage of it; and that is as far as I can get at present.

I shall have to wait for a few days--or it may be weeks--in London for the doing of certain things now necessitated by my acceptance of Uncle Roger's bequest.

But as soon as I can, dear, I shall come down to Croom and spend with you as many days as possible.

I shall then tell you all I am at liberty to tell, and I shall thank you personally for your consent to come with me to Vissarion.

Oh, how I wish my dear mother had lived to be with us! It would have made her happy, I know, to have come; and then we three who shared together the old dear, hard days would have shared in the same way the new splendour.