to start again for several months, until she had recovered some
strength and was better able to bear fatigue. This verdict was a
heavy blow to my sister, and the next four years were ones of great
trial and discomfort to her. A constant succession of disappointed
hopes and frustrated plans, which were difficult, even for Madam
Liberality, to bear!

She hoped when her husband came home on leave at Christmas, 1879, that
she should be able to return with him, but she was still unfit to go;
and then she planned to follow later with a sister, who should help
her on the journey, and be rewarded by visiting the island home of the
Knights, but this castle also fell to the ground. Meantime Julie was
suffering great inconvenience from the fact that she had sent all her
possessions to Malta several months before, keeping only some light
luggage which she could take with her. Amongst other things from which
she was thus parted, was the last chapter of "We and the World," which
she had written (as she often did the endings of her tales) when she
was first arranging the plot. This final scene was buried in a box of
books, and could not be found when wanted, so had to be rewritten and
then my sister's ideas seem to have got into a fresh channel, for she
brought her heroes safely back to their Yorkshire home, instead of
dropping the curtain on them after a gallant rescue in a Cornish mine,
as she originally arranged. Julie hoped against hope, as time went on,
that she should become stronger, and able to follow her _Lares_ and
_Penates_, so she would not have them sent back to her, until a final
end was put to her hopes by Major Ewing being sent on from Malta to
Ceylon, and in the climate of the latter place the doctors declared it
would be impossible for her to live. The goods, therefore, were now
sent back to England, and she consoled herself under the bitter trial
of being parted from her husband, and unable to share the enjoyment of
the new and wonderful scenes with which he was surrounded, by
thankfulness for his unusual ability as a vivid and brilliant
letter-writer. She certainly practised both in days of joy and sorrow
the virtue of being _laetus sorte mea_; which she afterwards so
powerfully taught in her "Story of a Short Life." I never knew her
fail to find happiness wherever she was placed, and good in whomsoever
she came across. Whatever her circumstances might be they always
yielded to her causes for thankfulness, and work