It was just three years since I had left Crown Anstey.

Lord Winter told me I should have some weeks to myself, but he was so incessantly occupied I never liked to ask for them.
I had never seen or heard anything of Crown Anstey since I left it.

At Harden Manor all was the same, unchanged and unaltered.
One morning, when I went into the library, a letter lay waiting for me.
I saw that it was Coralie's handwriting, and my first impulse was to burn it unread.

Why should she write to me again?
Her letters only pained me.

I threw it aside and began to work--in the busy occupation of the morning I forgot all about it.
I did not open it until evening.