In fact, Magdalen, on seeing how utterly worn out she was, and how little space the cottages afforded, thought it best, now that the patient was in the hands of sister, uncle, and nurse, to carry her off at once by the return car to Larne; and Dolores thought it best to accompany them, after Mysie had hung on her as one restored from death. But Mysie was absorbed in her brother, and Dolores had a strong yearning to be with her father, so strong that she decided not to return to England, but to procure a second outfit at Belfast, and to set forth again from thence, nothing daunted, for, as she said (not carelessly), such things did not happen immediately after, in a second voyage. In fact, though thankful and impressed by the loss of the others, she had gone through the crisis of the life of her heart and affections, and she had likewise been once in imminent peril through a convulsion of nature. Thus she was inclined to look on the wreck and the Irish cliffs as an experience in the way of business, so she was resolved to see the Giant’s Causeway, and to make notes upon it for her lectures. But it was a different thing with Agatha. She had been brought face to face with death; and though the actual time had been spent in hurry and bustle, and even the subsequent tossing in the boat had been not so much waiting and thinking as attending to others more terrified and injured than herself, and there followed the incessant waiting on Wilfred; still the experiences had worked in. She rested very silently, dwelling little to Magdalen on her thoughts; but each word she said, and her very countenance, showed that she had made a great step in life and realised the spiritual world, which hitherto had been outside her life—not disbelieved, but almost matter of speculation and study. She was not at all desirous of falling back from Dolores, whose grave steadiness and fortitude, the result of a truly brave and deep trust, had given her a sense of confidence and protection. So they wrote, and arranged for their passage, and, with Magdalen, spent the intermediate time in needful preparations at Belfast, and in an expedition to the Causeway, where they laid in a stock of notes and observations, all in a spirit that made Magdalen feel that she knew both in a manner she had never done before, and loved them with a deep value and confidence. Wilfred meanwhile made very slow, if any, progress.