She is coming home; and much as she prefers Yorkshire to Bayswater, she is pleased to return for my sake--for my sake.

She leaves the pure atmosphere of that simple country home to become the central point in a network of intrigue; and I am bound to keep the secret so closely interwoven with her fate.

I love her more truly, more purely than I thought myself capable of loving; yet I can only approach her as the tool of George Sheldon, a rapacious conspirator, bent on securing the hoarded thousands of old John Haygarth.
Of all men upon this earth I should be the last to underrate the advantages of wealth,--I who have been reared in the gutter, which is Poverty's cradle.

Yet I would fain Charlotte's fortune had come to her in any other fashion than as the result of my work in the character of a salaried private inquirer..