For three nights running did the General dine at Dr Trevor's table, while Miss Beveridge sat beside him, with pathetic little bows of lace pinned in the front of her shabby black silk, which somehow looked shabbier than ever for the attempt at decoration. At the beginning of the meal she was just Miss Beveridge, stiff, silent, colourless; but as time passed by and she talked to the General, and the General talked to her, attending to her little wants as if they were of all things in the world the most important, fussing about a draught that might possibly distress her, and violently kicking his opposite neighbour in his endeavours to provide her with a footstool, gradually, gradually the Miss Beveridge of the music-lessons and the Governesses' Home disappeared from sight, and there appeared in her place an absolutely different woman, with a sweet smiling face, out of which the lines seemed to have been miraculously smoothed away, while a delicate colour in her cheeks gave to the once grey face something of the fragile beauty of an old pastel. For fifteen years she had fought a hand-to-hand battle with want; a lonely battle, with no one to care or to comfort, and now it was meat, and drink, and health, and sunshine, to find herself of a sudden the most precious object on earth to one faithful heart! Although the General had given a promise not to be too precipitate in his wooing, it was easy to prophesy how things would end; but before the "two or three weeks" had come to an end, another event happened of such supreme importance to the Trevor household as to put in the background every other subject, interesting and romantic though it might be. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. TRYING DAYS. One May afternoon Miles came home with the news that, through the influence of an engineering friend, he had been offered a post in connection with a new railway which the ever-increasing mining industry in Mexico had rendered necessary. The salary proposed was a handsome one for so young a man. He owed the offer entirely to Mr Owen's good offices, and would be required to sail as soon as his outfit could be got together. Dr Trevor rejoiced in his son's success, and warmly congratulated him on having had so short a time to wait for an opening. He took a man's view of life, and felt that it was time that Miles faced the world on his own account; but the youth faded out of the mother's face as she sat in her corner and listened to the conversation. "Luck!" They called it luck that Miles, her darling, should be sent to the other side of the world, to a wild, dare-devil country, the very name of which conjured up a dozen thrilling tales of adventure. "A five years' appointment!" The words rang like a knell in her ears!