"Impossible! Then I must speak. You will be ready in three days from now. I feel that I require change, and we will go." "Margaret!" cried Vine, who during the past few minutes had been writhing in his seat, "how can you be so absurd!" "Poor George!" she said, with a sigh, as she rose from her chair. "I wish I could persuade him to go. Mind, Louise, my child, in three days from now. We shall go straight to Paris, perhaps for a month. You need not trouble about dress. A few necessaries. All that you will require we can get in Paris. Come in before you go to bed; I may have a few more words to say." She sailed slowly across the room, waving her fan gently, as if it were a wing which helped her progress, as she preserved her graceful carriage. Then the door closed behind her, and Louise half ran to her father's side. "Shall I go up with her?" she whispered anxiously. Her father shook his head. "But did you not notice how strange she seemed?" "No more strange, my dear, than she has often been before, after something has agitated her greatly. In her way she was very fond of poor Harry." "Yes, father, I know; but I never saw her so agitated as this." "She will calm down, as she has calmed down before." "But this idea of going abroad?" "She will forget it by to-morrow. I was wrong to speak as I did. It only sets her thinking more seriously. Poor Margaret! We must be very patient and forbearing with her. Her life was turned out of its regular course by a terrible disappointment. I try always to remember this when she is more eccentric--more trying than usual." Louise shrank a little more round to the back of her father's chair, as he drew her hand over his shoulder, and she laid her cheek upon his head as, with fixed eyes, she gazed straight before her into futurity, and a spasm of pain shot through her at her father's words, "a terrible disappointment," "eccentric." Had Aunt Marguerite ever suffered as she suffered now? and did such mental agony result in changing the whole course of a girl's young life? The tears stood in her eyes and dimmed them; but in spite of the blurring of her vision, she seemed to see herself gradually changing and growing old and eccentric too. For was not she also wasting with a terrible disappointment--a blow that must be as agonising as any Aunt Marguerite could have felt? The outlook seemed so blank and terrible that a strange feeling of excitement came over her, waking dream succeeding waking dream, each more painful than the last; but she was brought back to the present by her father's voice. "Why, my darling," he said, "your hand is quite cold, and you tremble. Come, come, come, you ought to know Aunt Margaret by now. There, it is time I started for Van Heldre's. I faithfully promised to go back this evening. Perhaps Luke will be there." "Yes, father," she said, making an effort to be calm, "it is time you went down. Give my dear love to Madelaine."