A few days later, as Agatha sat reading in the garden, two figures appeared on the drive, wheeling up their bicycles. One was Gillian, the other had a general air of the family, but much darker, and not one of the old acquaintances. Advancing to meet them, she said, “I am the only one at home. My sisters are all at lessons or in the village.” “I’ll leave a message,” said Gillian. “My mother wants you all to come up to picnic tea to see the foxgloves in the dell, on Monday, and to bring Mr. Delrio—” “Oh! thank you.” “I forgot, you had not seen my cousin Dolores Mohun before. Mysie calls her a cousin-twin, if you know what that is.” Agatha thought the newcomer’s great pensive dark eyes and overhanging brow under very black hair made her look older than Mysie, or indeed than Gillian herself; and when the message had been disposed of, the latter continued, “Dolores wanted to know about Miss Arthuret’s lecture, being rather in that line herself. She could not get home in time for it, and I was seeing the _Kittiwake_ party on board, and only crept in at the other end of the hall in time for Bessie’s faint echoes.” “I was in the very antipodes,” said Dolores, “in a haunt of ancient peace, whence they would not let me come away soon enough.” “And, Agatha, Aunt Jane says she saw you devouring Miss Arthuret with your eyes,” said Gillian. “It gave one a sense of new life,” said Agatha; and she related again Miss Arthuret’s speech, broken only by appreciative questions and comments from Dolores’ auditor, to whom, in the true fashion of nineteen, Agatha straightway lost her heart. Dolores, who had seen much more of the outer world than her cousins, and had had besides a deeply felt inward experience which might well render her far more responsive, and able to comprehend the questions working in the girl’s mind, and which found expression in, “I went to St. Robert’s only wanting to get my education carried on so that I might be a better governess; but I see now there are much farther on, much greater things to aim at, than I ever thought of.” “Alps on Alps arise!” said Dolores. “Yes—till they lose themselves—and where?” “Miss Merrifield would say in Heaven, by way of the Church.” “The all things in earth or under the earth rising up in circles of praise to the Cherubim and the Great White Throne,” said Dolores, her dark eyes raised in a moment’s contemplation. “Ah! One knows. But is that thought the one to be brought home to every one, as if they could bear it always? Are not we to do something—something—for the helping people here in this life, not always going on to the other life—” “Temporal or spiritual?” said Dolores; “or spiritual through temporal?” “And our part in helping,” said Agatha. “There is an immense deal to be thought out,” said Dolores. “I feel only at the beginning of the questions, and there is study and experience to go to them.” “You mean what one gets at Oxford?”