"Did he never go to say good-bye nor anything?" asked Miss Marjoribanks. She was sorry, for it was quite the contrary of the advice she had given, but still it would be wrong to deny that Mr Cavendish rose higher in Lucilla's opinion when she heard it. "I don't know any more than everybody knows. He has gone to Italy, but he will come back, and I suppose she can wait," Miss Marjoribanks added, with perhaps a touch of contempt. "For my part, I don't think she will break her heart." "It is because you do not know her," said Rose, with some indignation--for at seventeen a broken heart comes natural. "Oh, Lucilla, it is dreadful, and I don't know what to do!" cried the little artist, changing her tone. "I am a selfish wretch, but I cannot help it. It is as good as putting an end to my Career; and just after my design has been so successful--and when papa was so proud--and when I thought I might have been a help. It is dreadful to think of oneself when her heart is breaking; but I shall have to give up everything; and I--I can't help feeling it, Lucilla," cried Rose, with a sudden outburst of tears. All this was sufficiently unintelligible to Miss Marjoribanks, who was not the least in anxiety about Barbara's breaking heart. "Tell me what is the matter, and perhaps we can do something," said Lucilla, forgetting how little her past exertions had been appreciated; and Rose, with equal inconsistency, dried her tears at the sound of Miss Marjoribanks's reassuring voice. "I know I am a wretch to be thinking of myself," she said. "She cannot be expected to stay and sacrifice herself for us, after all she has suffered. She has made up her mind and advertised in the _Times_, and nothing can change it now. She is going out for a governess, Lucilla." "Going for a--what?" said Miss Marjoribanks, who could not believe her ears. "For a governess," said Rose calmly; for though she had been partly brought up at Mount Pleasant, she had not the elevated idea of an instructress of youth which might have been expected from a pupil of that establishment. "She has advertised in the _Times_," Rose added, with quiet despair, "with no objections to travel. I would do anything in the world for Barbara, but one can't help thinking of oneself sometimes, and there is an end of my Career." When she had said this she brushed the last tear off her eyelashes, and sat straight up, a little martyr and heroic victim to duty. "Her eye, though fixed on empty space, beamed keen with honour"; but still there was a certain desperation in the composure with which Rose regarded, after the first outburst, the abandonment of all her hopes.