It was not much to be wondered at that so warm-hearted and unselfish a creature had not found the charge of her husband's young sister a burdensome one. And as, even in this crooked life, goodness sometimes is recompensed, Gertrude Eyrecourt met with her reward. Everybody--_her_ everybody--praised her for her sisterly behaviour to homeless Roma; and Roma herself, whose capacity for gratitude was both wide and deep, thanked her constantly, though tacitly, by doing everything in her power to please her, resolutely refusing to see her smallnesses and selfishnesses, admiring her and respecting her judgment--and now and then too by determinedly disagreeing with her. Both Mrs Eyrecourt and her guests found their hopes fulfilled. Roma's return improved the state of things immensely. She came home in great spirits, having enjoyed her visit far more than she had expected, yet declaring, and with evident sincerity, somewhat to Eugenia's surprise, that she felt delighted to be at home again. "Who do you think was my travelling companion part of the way?" she said, when the three ladies were sitting together the first morning after her arrival. "He got in at Marley, and saw me into my train at the junction--he was going on to town. Do guess who it was--he is a friend of yours, Eugenia. Why, how stupid you both are! You are generally so quick at guessing, Gertrude." "I!" exclaimed Mrs Eyrecourt, looking up, as if aware for the first time that Roma had been speaking to her. "I beg your pardon, I thought you said the unknown was a friend of _Eugenia's_." "Well, and if I did, is the world so big that by no conceivable chance two people living at opposite ends of the country could happen to have any mutual acquaintances?" said Roma. "To hear you speak, Gertrude, any one would think you had never been five miles from home. Like a nun I remember seeing when I was a child, in a convent in Switzerland, who thought, but wasn't quite sure--the mere idea even of such an adventure seemed to overawe her--that when she was quite a little girl she had once been at Martigny, six miles from home. Why, Gertrude, I thought you prided yourself on being something of a cosmopolitan. Were you never at a place that long ago, when nobody but Miss Burney's heroines ever went anywhere, used to be called Brighthelmstone, and did you never dine with certain friends of yours there, who never get new dresses unless they are guaranteed to be of the fashion of twenty years ago, dear old souls?"