After nine years in India one is glad to get back to England, particularly as Darrell, in spite of the large stock of health and spirits which he took from England with him, had found as most men do in India that he had a liver. Elizabeth had remained perfectly well during all the nine years of her life under the hard blue Indian skies. She was now in her thirtieth year, and Darrell was nearly forty. Their attachment had assumed the fixed and settled form which nine years of constant association and respect must inevitably produce in every marriage. There were no jars or disagreements between them, and except for the absence of children Darrell reckoned his domestic life absolutely perfect. Pelham, who like Darrell was now a major with a lieutenant–colonelcy in sight, knew that the time had come, if he was ever to see anything of the world beyond India, England, and his flying trip to the United States, for him to start upon his travels. In one way he was no longer necessary to Elizabeth, as she was now a trained and experienced woman,—the least likely, he thought, of any woman in the world, to make a false step of any kind. Elizabeth herself, although she had never ceased to depend on Pelham, had developed under his tutelage, so that she was in many ways able to stand without him; and, not being a woman to keep a man at her side without cause, she encouraged Pelham in his desire to travel. The three returned to England together. After being established in the fine London house which was a part of their inheritance, Elizabeth’s first thought was for her father. It was in the spring–time that the Darrells arrived in Europe, and a delightful plan was arranged by which Elizabeth was to send for General Brandon, and he with the Darrells and Pelham were to begin in August a three months’ journey on the Continent. Elizabeth, whose mind was now well formed and furnished, looked forward with eagerness to seeing the brilliant capitals of Continental Europe,—those spots of romantic beauty and poetic sights, of which she had first read and dreamed in the old country house in Virginia and afterwards under the solemn deodars and in the shady bungalows of the Punjaub.