t the brothers had scarcely seen each other twice in a
score of years, and had kept up only the most fitful correspondence.
Nevertheless, we wrote to the clergyman, describing the sad case of
his niece, and in reply we got a letter, addressed to Nina herself,
saying that of course she must come at once to Yorkshire, and consider
the rectory her home. I don't need to recount the difficulties we had
in explaining to her, in persuading her. I have known few more painful
moments than that when, at the Gare du Nord, half a dozen of us
established the poor, benumbed, bewildered child in her compartment,
and sent her, with our godspeed, alone upon her long journey--to her
strange kindred, and the strange conditions of life she would have to
encounter among them. From the Cafe Bleu to a Yorkshire parsonage! And
Nina's was not by any means a neutral personality, nor her mind a
blank sheet of paper. She had a will of her own; she had convictions,
aspirations, traditions, prejudices, which she would hold to with
enthusiasm because they had been her father's, because her father had
taught them to her; and she had manners, habits, tastes. She would be
sure to horrify the people she was going to; she would be sure to
resent their criticism, their slightest attempt at interference. Oh,
my heart was full of misgivings; yet--she had no money, she was
eighteen years old--what else could we advise her to do? All the same,
her face, as it looked down upon us from the window of her railway
carriage, white, with big terrified eyes fixed in a gaze of blank
uncomprehending anguish, kept rising up to reproach me for weeks
afterwards. I had her on my conscience as if I had personally wronged
her.

VI.

It was characteristic of her that, during her absence, she hardly
wrote to us. She is of far too hasty and impetuous a nature to take
kindly to the task of letter-writing; her moods are too inconstant;
her thoughts, her fancies, supersede one another too rapidly. Anyhow,
beyond the telegram we had made her promise to send, announcing her
safe arrival, the most favoured of us got nothing more than an
occasional scrappy note, if he got so much; while the greater number
of the long epistles some of us felt in duty bound to address to her,
elicited not even the semblance of an acknowledgment. Hence, about the
particulars of her experience we were quite in the dark, though of its
general features we were informed, succinctly, in a big, dashing,
un