“Which when his mother saw, she in her mind Was troubled sore, she wist well what to weene; She could by search nor any means out find The secret cause and nature of his teene. Unto himself she tame and him besought, If aught lay hidden in his grieved thought, It to reveal: who still her answered there was nought. FAIRY QUEEN, CANTO XII. BY this time April was pretty far advanced. Suddenly, after an interval of some weeks’ temperate weather succeeding the usual spring rains, Altes grew intolerably hot, and every one began to desert the poor little town as if it we plague stricken. Some weeks previously, Lady Severn had engaged for the six months’ summer, a villa at Vevey, and thither she now decided on removing herself and her rather cumbrous household. Much to Ralph’s disappointment. He was heartily sick of living abroad in this unhomelike fashion, and had been for long hoping that the approaching summer would see Medhurst once more inhabited. But to this wish of his, his mother was as yet unwilling to agree. She still shrank from returning to the place where the light of her eyes, her eldest son, had met his death, and succeeded in persuading herself that on every account, Sybil’s especially, it was better for them all to remain on the continent for another year. So they left Altes at the end of April. Sufficient time, however, had elapsed to Ralph to have received an answer to his second letter, but none arrived. He came at last to a new determination. At all risks, he resolved, after seeing his mother and her party safely established at Vevey, to go to England, and with the help of the Cheltenham address in his possession, seek to discover his lost Marion, and learn the reason of her strange silence. Mrs. Archer’s not having replied to his enquiries did not surprise him. He began to feel sure that she must have set out on her long journey eastward before his letter had arrived at her mother-in-law’s house. The fear that Marion might have accompanied her to India, he resolutely determined for the present to set aside. Time enough to think of it when he discovered it to be actually the case. As ill-luck would have it, some considerable time elapsed before he found himself free to turn northwards. Half way on their journey to Switzerland Sybil fell ill—grievously ill, poor little dove–and he could not find it in his heart to leave her, even had he thought it right to do so. It was a very miserable state of things. Their resting-place was a small provincial town near the French frontier, where, as may be imagined, the accommodation was far from luxurious. They succeeded in securing the best rooms in the best hotel, which sounds gorgeous enough, but practically speaking was the very reverse.