“I am well enough to go to India to-day, but I am not well enough to bear the anxiety of waiting for another mail’s rows. It would kill me, Marion—kill me, simply,” repeated Cissy, emphatically, “and neither you nor anyone else who wants to keep me alive, will attempt to stop me. As for Bailey, he is an old woman and an old fool to the bargain. All the same, I have sent for him and seen him. He says I am as well able to go now as I am likely to be for the next year or two, if ever. And whether it is so or not, Marion, I must go. What is my health to George’s? What would I care for my life without him? You don’t know what it is to love anyone, child, as I love my husband. Some day you may, and then you will understand. But now, I must ask you, beg of you, to harass me by no remonstrance. I have done all I was told. I have seen Bailey, and will also see Frobisher at Cheltenham.” Marion felt indeed that any interference on her part would be worse than useless, though a sad foreboding was at her heart, and the tears filled her eyes, as she looked at poor Cissy’s rapidly changing colour, the too great brilliance of her eyes, and the nervous working of her thin, white hands. “And Charlie?” was all she asked. “He will go, too. George wishes it, and Simla is so healthy. You have not read the postscript.” Which accordingly Marion did; and then proceeded to give way to a most silly and ill-timed burst of tears! “How silly!” stronger-minded young ladies will exclaim. Just so; but then I am telling all about it, as it happened, and I must not make my heroine any stronger or wiser than she was, poor little girl. Cissy should have scolded her, but she didn’t. Instead thereof, she plumped herself down beside her on the floor, and for a good quarter of an hour, they cried and sobbed in each other’s arms. Then they sat up and wiped their eyes, like sensible young women, as in the main they were, kissed each other, while they ejaculated—“Dearest Cissy,” and “darling May,” and set to work to think what they must do. First of all there was Marion’s engagement with Lady Severn. This, fortunately, was within a fortnight of expiring, and in answer to a note of explanation which Marion dispatched, came a sufficiently cordial reply from her pupils’ grandmother, enclosing a cheque for the fifteen pounds (which had been all the little governess would agree to accept for each quarter) owing to the end of the engagement, expressing thanks for the kindness and attention she had bestowed on her pupils, and begging her on no account to distress herself at having to leave Altes before the quarter had fully expired.