said Camilla gently. And brave Bessie was silent.

The letter to Mrs Lyle was written and sent. It reached her in her new
Indian quarters about ten days before Mrs Mildmay started on her return
home.

* * * * *

It was May; the charming capricious month we dream of all the year
round, always believing--thanks to poets and childish remembrances
rose-coloured by the lapse of time--that if the weather is cold and
gray and generally disappointing this year, it is quite an exception and
never has been so before: it was May before the day came on which Lady
Myrtle Goodacre's landau set off in state for Thetford railway station,
with Jacinth, Frances, and Eugene already occupying it, and a vacant
seat for Miss Alison Mildmay whom they were to call for on the way.

Frances and even Eugene were almost speechless with excitement: Jacinth,
though wound up to a tremendous pitch, was too proud and too
self-contained by habit to show what she was feeling.

'Lady Myrtle _hopes_ you will come back with us, Aunt Alison,' she said
quietly, 'at least to spend the rest of the day, as you wouldn't consent
to come to stay for two or three.'

Miss Mildmay, before replying, glanced at her niece with a curious sort
of admiration, not altogether free from disappointment.

'Jacinth certainly is extraordinarily self-controlled,' she thought.
Very self-controlled, like very reserved people do not always entirely
appreciate their own characteristics in another! But aloud she replied
much in the same matter-of-fact tone.

'It is very good of her, but I would rather find my own way home from
the station. I will come out to Robin Redbreast to-morrow or the day
after to have a talk with your mother. She will have more than enough to
occupy her to-day.'

Jacinth secretly commended her aunt's good sense, but the younger ones
seemed a little sorry. They wanted everybody to be as happy as
themselves.

'It isn't that you don't think there'd be room enough in the carriage,
Aunt Alison, is it?' said Frances, anxiously. 'For the closed wagonette
is coming too for mamma's maid and the luggage, and I wouldn't mind the
least bit getting into it.'

'Or I could go on the box,' suggested Eugene. 'I could _quite_ squeeze
in between Bailey and Fred, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind.'

'Thank you, dears,' said Miss Mildmay, more warmly than she had spoken
to Jacinth; 'thank you very much. No; it is not on that account. And
i