Uffington's letter to Eleanor was hard work to write. The intelligence it had to convey must necessarily be a dreadful shock, as well as a profound grief, to the girl who had loved May so dearly, and who had so few besides to love. Eleanor was at Brighton with Mrs. Chadwick, and though she had been told of May's illness, she had not been told--because Uffington himself was ignorant of the truth--that a fatal termination was apprehended. The chill wintry morning had dawned before his task was completed; but as he wrote, in striving to console Eleanor consolation came to himself; in endeavouring to convince her that 'it was better so,' as May herself had said, he came to believe his own words, to realise that it was indeed well with May; that the life which she must have faced would have been too hard for her, and Death, which had taken her definitively out of the hands of man, was her best friend--a better friend than even he had been, or could be in the future; a closer friend, shielding her from scorn and unkindness, from vain regret and self-reproach from external temptation, and from herself. The memory of the woman whom Uffington had loved, and ruined, and recompensed for ruin in so far as a man can, was with him as he wrote to the pure and proud young girl whose love he had won, and won with a wondering secret exultation; a dead face looked up at him from beneath the waters of the Swiss lake, as he described that other dead face, with its fresh set seal of peace. During the hours of that night something passed into the soul of Nugent Uffington which was the soundest and safest of guarantees for Eleanor Irvine's happiness and security as his wife--a message of peace and self-knowledge sent to him from the dead.