I raised my eyes to her face and wondered if I should ever see her again--if this little flash of school life was all I was to be permitted to enjoy. But had I enjoyed it? I did not know. I could scarcely tell what my own sensations were. A minute later I was in the cab. Hermione's face was no longer visible from the doorway; Augusta, who was standing on the balcony of our sitting-room and waving frantically, was lost to view: the school, with its brightness, its life, its strange spirit of intrigue, its curious un-English customs, seemed to vanish for ever. I flung myself back in the cab and cried as though my heart would break. PART TWO, CHAPTER TWELVE. THE PROFESSOR'S ILLNESS. There are two ways of taking a journey. I had come to the school with expectations bright and rosy. I had been there for a little over two months, and I was returning home close on the Easter holidays with very different feelings. As I was whirled through the darkness by the night-express which was to convey me to Calais I could not help thinking of all that had occurred. I was a totally different girl from what I had been when I started on that journey. I had seen a great deal of fresh life; I had lived in a new atmosphere; I had made new friends; I had found that the world was a larger place than even big London; that there were all sorts of different experiences; and even so, that I myself was only on the threshold of life. Could I ever regret the narrow time when my principal friends were the Swan girls, when a scolding from old Hannah was the worst thing that could occur to me, after what I had lately lived through? But then the occurrence of that very morning came over me with a flash of intolerable shame. I was thinking more of my school than of my father; but, of course, all the time he was in the background. We arrived at Calais, and the passage across the Channel was without incident of any sort, and we found ourselves at Victoria Station at an early hour on the following morning. It was a dreary, cold, and foggy day, and I shivered as I stood in my fur cloak on the platform while Mademoiselle ran wildly about, collecting the luggage, and trying to find a porter to convey it to the Customs. Mademoiselle evidently did not appreciate England, and I felt that the air was more bitingly cold than in Paris. We got into a cab and were driven as fast as possible through the West End towards that dreary part of the town where the old house stood. Yes, the old house was there; I had almost expected to see that it too had slipped away into the past with all the rest, that the shadowy house as well as the shadowy times had vanished into illimitable space. But it stood firm, and there on the steps was Charley. He had opened the door as soon as ever he heard the sound of wheels drawing up on the pavement, and now he rushed down to greet me. His face was red as though he had been crying a great deal. He said: