Mr Goring had escaped from the crowd and bustle to stand bare-headed on the pavement, whence he could catch a last glimpse of his daughter as she drove away from the house which had been her home. His face looked pinched and worn in the keen autumn air; he smiled and joked with the men by his side, but his eyes were restless, and kept turning back to the door through which Jean would pass for the last time as a daughter of the house. Another moment and she was there; the crowd surged after her on to the pavement. He stood before her, and held out his hand. She held up her cheek, smiled, and leapt lightly into the carriage, the door of which Robert was holding open. He sprang to his seat, there was a vision of two heads bent forward, of two radiant, illumined faces; the coachman flicked up his horses--they had passed out of sight. Mr Goring shivered, and turned back to the house. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The happiest moment of my wedding day?" answered Jean to a question put to her some months later. "The happiest moment of all was when the carriage drove off from the door, and left you all behind!" CHAPTER ELEVEN. CONTRASTED FATES. While Jean was blissfully enjoying the first weeks of her married life, the friend who had been to her as a second mother was lying dangerously ill in her upper room. The bustle of the last few months, culminating in the excitement of the wedding, had proved too much for Miggles's weak heart; and having gallantly kept on her feet until the supreme need was past, she had the less strength left with which to fight the enemy. "Don't tell Jean. Promise not to tell Jean!" That was her first and most insistent cry; and being satisfied on the point, she laid herself down, and spoke no more for many weary days and nights. Once again Vanna found herself bound to the household, and had the consolation or feeling of help to the mistress and of comfort to the invalid, who seemed to cling pathetically to Jean's friend in the absence of her own dear nursling. Hospital nurses were much rarer luxuries in the seventies than at the present day, and in this case the duty of nursing the invalid was undertaken by Mrs Goring, her maid, and Vanna, equally. The maid slept in the sick-room, ready to pay any attention which was required during the night; Mrs Goring was exact and punctilious in administering medicines and food at the right intervals, and in seeing that the sick-room was kept scrupulously in order; it devolved upon Vanna to ease the invalid by the innumerable, gentle little offices which seem to come by instinct to women of sympathetic natures, and later on as she grew stronger, to amuse her by reading aloud, talking, and--what in this case was even more welcome--lending an attentive ear while the other discoursed.