very silly, and I'm sure you have wished yourself away a
hundred times. I am really, seriously, grateful to you.'

Rhoda put a hand on each side of the girl's face, and kissed her, but
without saying a word; and thereupon left the house. Mildred Vesper,
after changing her dress in the room used by Monica, as she had done on
arriving, went off by train to her duties in Great Portland Street.
Virginia alone remained to see the married couple start for their
honeymoon. They were going into Cornwall, and on the return journey
would manage to see Miss Madden at her Somerset retreat. For the
present, Virginia was to live on at Mrs. Conisbee's, but not in the old
way; henceforth she would have proper attendance, and modify her
vegetarian diet--at the express bidding of the doctor, as she explained
to her landlady.

Though that very evening Everard Barfoot made a call upon his friends
in Chelsea, the first since Rhoda's return from Cheddar, he heard
nothing of the event that marked the day. But Miss Nunn appeared to him
unlike herself; she was absent, had little to say, and looked, what he
had never yet known her, oppressed by low spirits. For some reason or
other Miss Barfoot left the room.

'You are thinking with regret of your old home,' Everard remarked,
taking a seat nearer to Miss Nunn.'

'No. Why should you fancy that?'

'Only because you seem rather sad.'

'One is sometimes.'

'I like to see you with that look. May I remind you that you promised
me some flowers from Cheddar?'

'Oh, so I did,' exclaimed the other in a tone of natural recollection.
'I have brought them, scientifically pressed between blotting-paper.
I'll fetch them.'

When she returned it was together with Miss Barfoot, and the
conversation became livelier.

A day or two after this Everard left town, and was away for three
weeks, part of the time in Ireland.

'I left London for a while,' he wrote from Killarney to his cousin,
'partly because I was afraid I had begun to bore you and Miss Nunn.
Don't you regret giving me permission to call upon you? The fact is, I
can't live without intelligent female society; talking with women, as I
talk with you two, is one of my chief enjoyments. I hope you won't get
tired of my visits; in fact, they are all but a necessity to me, as I
have discovered since coming away. But it was fair that you should have
a rest.'

'Don't be afraid,' Miss Barfoot replied to this part of his letter. 'We
are not at all