Indeed, when Dora was betrayed into giving her mother a hint of that "something," unsuspected by the seniors of the circle, which had been between Cyril Carey and Fanny Russell, and rendered Fanny's destination still more heartless and hateful, Mrs. Millar took an entirely different view of the circumstances from that taken by her daughters, and was both indignant and intolerant. "What presumption in Cyril Carey!" broke out the gentle mother of marriageable daughters, full of righteous wrath. "To dream of making up to a girl and perhaps engaging her simple affections, with the danger of breaking her heart and spoiling her prospects, when he had just failed to pass at college, and had not so much as a calling--not to say an income, with which to keep a wife! I shall think worse of him than I did before, after hearing this." "But you forget, mother," remonstrated Dora, "that the bank was in existence then. His father might have been able to do something for Cyril." "He was not going to live on the bank's capital and credit. There was too much of that going on already with poor James Carey's encroaching, dishonest relations and their friends. And I beg to tell you, Dora, that a man who cannot help himself, but has to wait for his father to do something for him, is a very poor match for any girl. Fanny Russell is well rid of him. I have no doubt she will think so before she is many years older--that is, if this is not all a piece of foolish nonsense such as girls are apt to take into their heads about their companions. If there was anything in it, and she had not been going away, her father ought to have been warned, and Cyril Carey spoken to in the way he deserved--selfish scapegrace! As it is, the bare suspicion is enough to reconcile one to Fanny Russell's going out to India, though that custom for girls has fallen into disrepute, and I never had any liking for it. Still I hope that Fanny will soon make an excellent marriage, and will learn to laugh at Cyril Carey and his unwarrantable presumption, together with any girlish folly of which she may have been guilty." Mrs. Millar spoke in another fashion to the little Doctor. She had happened to be at the railway station on the raw, chill morning when Fanny Russell, in her smart new gray travelling suit--part of her outfit--was put into a railway carriage by her father and left there alone, while he went to look after the luggage and find a smoking-carriage for himself. Fanny sat like a statue. She did not even raise her veil when she was bidding farewell to Lucy Hewett and Dora, who were seeing her off--not to take a last look at Redcross, where she had spent her youth.