nd stared out of it, as if
attracted by something in the quadrangle.

She heard him go out and shut the door.

She waited some little time doing nothing, standing still by the
window--very still. Then she went out of the room, up the staircase and
into the corridor towards her aunt's bedroom.

She knocked and went in.

Lady Dashwood turned round and looked at her. Something in May's face
arrested her.

"A lovely morning, May. Just the day for seeing Oxford at its best."

And this forced May to say, at once, what she was going to say. She was
going away in the afternoon.

Lady Dashwood received May's news quietly. She gave May a look of meek
resignation that was harder to bear than any expostulation would have
been.

"Everybody is going," she said slowly, and lying back on her pillows
with a sigh. "I must be going directly, as soon as I am up and about. I
can't leave your Uncle John alone any longer, and there is so much that
even an old woman can do, and that I had to put aside to come here."

May was standing at the foot of the bed looking at her very gravely.

"I can't imagine you not doing a lot," she said.

"I shall be all right in a couple of days," said Lady Dashwood. "What
was wrong with me, dear, was nerves, nerves, nothing but nerves, and I
am ashamed of it. When I am bouncing with vigour again, May, I shall go.
I shall leave Oxford. I shall leave Jim."

"I suppose you will have to," said May, vaguely.

"Jim will be horribly lonely," said Lady Dashwood.

"I'm afraid so," said May, slowly.

"Imagine," said Lady Dashwood, "Jim seeing me off at the station and
then coming back here. Imagine him coming back alone, crunching over the
gravel and going up the steps into the hall. You know what the hall is
like--a sweet place--and those dim portraits on the walls all looking
down at him out of their faded eyes! All men!"

May looked at her Aunt Lena gravely.

"Then see him look round! Silence--nobody there. Then see him go up that
staircase. He looks into the drawing-room, that big empty room. Nobody,
my dear, but that fast-looking clergyman over the fireplace. That's not
all, May. I can see him go out and go to his library. Nobody
there--everything silent--books--the Cardinal--and the ghost."

"Oh!" said May. She did not smile.

"Now, my dear," said Lady Dashwood, "I'm not going to think about it
any more! I've done with it. Let's talk of something else." That,
indeed, was the last that Lady Da