rations for his departure were urgent. Myra did everything.
If she had been the head of a family she could not have been more
thoughtful or apparently more experienced. If she had a doubt, she
stepped over to Mrs. Penruddock and consulted her. As for Mrs. Ferrars,
she had become very unwell, and unable to attend to anything. Her
occasional interference, fitful and feverish, and without adequate
regard to circumstances, only embarrassed them. But, generally speaking,
she kept to her own room, and was always weeping.

The last day came. No one pretended not to be serious and grave. Mrs.
Ferrars did not appear, but saw Endymion alone. She did not speak, but
locked him in her arms for many minutes, and then kissed him on the
forehead, and, by a gentle motion, intimating that he should retire, she
fell back on her sofa with closed eyes. He was alone for a short time
with his father after dinner. Mr. Ferrars said to him: "I have treated
you in this matter as a man, and I have entire confidence in you. Your
business in life is to build up again a family which was once honoured."

Myra was still copying inventories when he returned to the drawing-room.
"These are for myself," she said, "so I shall always know what you ought
to have. Though you go so early, I shall make your breakfast to-morrow,"
and, leaning back on the sofa, she took his hand. "Things are dark, and
I fancy they will be darker; but brightness will come, somehow or other,
to you, darling, for you are born for brightness. You will find friends
in life, and they will be women."

It was nearly three years since Endymion had travelled down to Hurstley
by the same coach that was now carrying him to London. Though apparently
so uneventful, the period had not been unimportant in the formation,
doubtless yet partial, of his character. And all its influences had been
beneficial to him. The crust of pride and selfishness with which large
prosperity and illimitable indulgence had encased a kind, and far from
presumptuous, disposition had been removed; the domestic sentiments
in their sweetness and purity had been developed; he had acquired some
skills in scholarship and no inconsiderable fund of sound information;
and the routine of religious thought had been superseded in his instance
by an amount of knowledge and feeling on matters theological, unusual
at his time of life. Though apparently not gifted with any dangerous
vivacity, or fatal facility of acquisition, his mi