During the week, I had taken an opportunity to drive over to the Cedars, shake hands with Colin and his wife, and give his dear old mother one long kiss, which she did not know was a good-bye. Otherwise I bade farewell to no one. My last walk through the village was amidst a deluge of August rain, in which my moorlands vanished, all mist and gloom. A heavy, heavy night: it will be long before the weight of it is lifted off my remembrance. And yet I knew I was doing right, and, if needed, would do it all over again. Every human love has its sacrifices and its anguishes, as well as its joys--the one great love of life has often most of all. Therefore, let those beware who enter upon it lightly, or selfishly, or without having counted its full cost. "I do not know if we shall be happy," said I to Penelope, when she was cheering me with a future that may never come--"I only know that Max and I have cast our lots together, and that we shall love one another to the end." And in that strong love armed, I lived--otherwise, many times that day, it would have seemed easier to have died. When I went, as usual, to bid papa goodnight, I could hardly stand. He looked at me suspiciously. "Good night, my dear. By-the-by, Dora, I shall want you to drive me to the Cedars tomorrow." "I--I--Penelope will do it." And I fell on his breast with a pitiful cry. "Only bid me good-bye! Only say 'God bless you,' just once, father." He breathed hard. "I thought so. Is it to be to-morrow?" "Yes." "Where?" I told him. For a few minutes papa let me lie where I was; patting my shoulder softly, as one does a sobbing child--then, still gently, he put me away from him. "We had better end this, Dora; I cannot bear it. Kiss me. Good-bye." "And not one blessing? Papa, papa!" My father rose, and laid his hand solemnly on my head:--"You have been a dutiful girl to me, in all things save this, and a good daughter makes a good wife. Farewell--wherever you go,--God bless you!" And as he closed the library-door upon me I thought I had taken my last look of my dear father. It was only six o'clock in the morning when Penelope took me to the station. Nobody saw us--nobody knew. The man at the railway stopped us, and talked to Penelope for full two minutes about his wife's illness--two whole minutes out of our last five. --My sister would not bid me good-bye--being determined, she said, to see me again, either in London or Liverpool, before we sailed. She had kept me up wonderfully, and her last kiss was almost cheerful, or she made it seem so. I can still see her--very pale, for she had been up since daylight, but otherwise quiet and tearless, pacing the solitary platform--our two long shadows gliding together before us, in the early morning sun. And I see her, even to the last minute, standing with her hand on the carriage-door--smiling.