oor head ached as the summer noontide wore on, and the
bees hummed in the garden below, and the distant waves danced gaily in
the sunlight; and the knowledge that the bells were really ringing at
Ashbourne could not be driven from her mind. How the Shepherd Kings,
and the Pharaohs, and the comparatively modern days of Joseph and his
brethren, and the ridiculously recent era of Moses, passed, like dim
shifting shadows, before her mental vision. She retraced her steps in
that dreary book, again and again, patiently, forcing her mind to the
uncongenial task.

"I will not be such a slave as to think of him all this long summer
day," she said to herself. "I _will_ think of the god Ra, and lotus
flowers, and the Red Nile, and the Green Nile, and all this wonderful
land where I am going to take dear old McCroke by-and-by."

She read on till dinner-time, only pausing to scribble rapid notes of
the dates and names and facts which would not stand steadily in her
whirling brain; and then she went down to the parlour, no longer pale,
but with two hectic spots on her cheeks, and her eyes unnaturally
bright.

"Ah," ejaculated Miss Skipwith, delightedly. "You look better already.
There is nothing like severe study for bracing the nerves."

Violet talked about Egypt all dinner-time, but she ate hardly anything,
and that hectic flush upon her cheeks grew more vivid as she talked.

"To think that after the seed lying dormant all this time, it should
have germinated at last with such sudden vigour," mused Miss Skipwith.
"The poor girl is talking a good deal of nonsense; but that is only the
exuberance of a newly awakened intellect."

Vixen went back to the Egyptians directly after dinner. She toiled
along the arid road with an indomitable patience. Her ideas of Egypt
had hitherto been of the vaguest. Vast plains of barren sand, a pyramid
or two, Memnon's head breathing wild music in the morning sunshine,
crocodiles, copper-coloured natives, and Antony and Cleopatra. These
things were about as much as Miss McCroke's painstaking tuition had
implanted in her pupil's mind. And here, without a shadow of vocation,
this poor ignorant girl was poring over the driest details that ever
interested the scholar. The mysteries of the triple language, the
Rosetta Stone, Champollion--_tout le long de la riviere_. Was it any
wonder that her head ached almost to agony, and that the ringing of
imaginary wedding bells sounded distractingly in her ears?