Madoline’s first thoughts were of the pain of being parted from her lover, whose presence had for so long been the sunshine of her days, and so much a part of her life, that she seemed scarcely to live while he was away from her. Existence was reduced to a mere mechanical moving about, and doing duties which had lost all their savour. But these first thoughts, being selfish, were swiftly succeeded in a mind so entirely unselfish by other considerations. If it were for Gerald’s good that he should go to the other end of the world, that they should be parted for much longer than the five or six weeks of which he spoke so lightly, it would not have been in Madoline’s nature to desire him to forego even a possible advantage. She had fancied sometimes of late that he was occasionally dull and low-spirited; and now this letter explained all. He was out of health. He had been leading too quiet and womanish a life, no doubt, in his willingness to spend his days in her society. He had foregone all those hardy exercises and field sports which are so necessary to a man who has no serious work in life. Madoline’s telegram ran thus: ‘Go by all means, if you think the change will do you good. I tremble at the idea of your crossing the sea at this time of the year. Let me see you before you go. If you cannot come here, I will ask my aunt to go to London with me that I may at least bid you good-bye.’ The answer came as quickly as electricity could bring it, and although laconic, was satisfactory: ‘I will be with you about five o’clock this afternoon.’ ‘Dear fellow, how little he thinks of the trouble of travelling so many miles to please me,’ thought Madoline; and the idea of her lover’s affection sustained her against the pain of parting. ‘Next year I shall have the right to go wherever he goes,’ she told herself. Daphne heard of the Canadian expedition, but said so little about it that Lina wondered at her coolness. ‘I thought you would have been more surprised,’ she said. ‘Did you? Why, there is really nothing startling or uncommon in the idea,’ answered Daphne smilingly. ‘This rushing about the world for sport seems the most fashionable thing among young men with plenty of money. The Society Journals are always telling us how Lord This or Sir John That has gone to the Rockies to shoot wild sheep, or to the North Pole for bears, or to Hungary or Wallachia, or the Balkan range. The beaten tracks count for nothing nowadays.’ When the afternoon came, Lina was alone to receive her lover. Daphne had been seized with a dutiful impulse towards her aunt, and had gone to drink tea at the Rectory, with Edgar in attendance upon her. ‘Won’t you defer your duty-visit till to-morrow, and wish Gerald good-bye?’ asked Lina, when Daphne proposed the expedition. ‘No, dear; you can do that for me. This is an occasion on which you ought to have him all to yourself. You will have so much to say to each other.’