His daughter's thoughts were with the dead; but still the living, and the duties of life, claimed her care. One cannot live in the world and not be of it; thus, one of her last days spent at pleasant Laurel Lodge was occupied in paying farewell visits--supported between Rose and Hawkshaw--to her old pensioners and dependents in the thatched cottages among those lovely green lanes, that ere long were to know her footsteps no more, and these old people mingled their blessings with tearful hopes of her happiness and long life, in the new home to which she was about to depart. On the tenth day after Morley's disappearance she found herself, with her father, Rose, Hawkshaw, and old Nurse Folgate, seated in a first-class carriage, speeding along the London and North-Western line towards the metropolis. Laurel Lodge had long since vanished, with its whole locality. Steeped in summer haze, the landscape flew past like the wind; but Ethel was listless. To her it seemed that the purpose of life, the joy of existence, the romance of love, and the charm of youth, had all gone for ever. Hawkshaw was seated opposite to her. She lowered her veil to conceal her face; he held the last number of _Punch_ well up to conceal his. As Morley had disappeared thus, and beyond all trace, and as his berth was secured in their ship, the _Hermione_, which was to sail for the Isle of France, as soon as her cargo was all hoisted in, Hawkshaw availed himself of the circumstance to go in his place; by which means this most enterprising Texan officer secured his passage free. CHAPTER XL DARKNESS MADE LIGHT. We last left Morley Ashton and Hawkshaw seated near the verge of Acton Chine. The former was extracting from his portemonnaie the ring which Ethel Basset had so unwisely commissioned him to return, and he remained with it in his hand for a minute or two, forming in his own mind the least offensive mode of tendering it. At that time the chimes of the church of Acton-Rennel rung out joyously their closing peal, and the sound, together with the beauty of the evening, the softness of the wooded landscape on one hand, and the wild grandeur of the surf-beaten rocks on the other, were not without a most soothing influence on the somewhat poetic and imaginative temperament of Morley, who reflected on the shortness of the time he would be permitted to look on that familiar scene, and the changes that must take place ere--if ever--he saw it again. He said something of this kind to Hawkshaw, who was alternately silent or nervously garrulous, adding, with a sad smile-- "I never hear the chimes of old Acton, ringing over the woodlands, without thinking of the lines-- "'Those evening bells, those evening bells, How many a tale their music tells, Of youth, of home, and native clime, When last I heard their soothing chime.' And then the scenery here about is so glorious, and so thoroughly English in its character and fertility!"