Billy--who has managed to get close up to me--keeps on helping me indefatigably to champagne, under the mistaken impression he is doing me a last service. I catch mamma's sad eyes fixed upon me from the opposite side, and then I know I am going to cry again, and, rising from the table, get away in safety to my own room, whither I am followed by her, and we say our few final, farewell words in private. Three hours later I have embraced mother for the last time, and am speeding away from home and friends and childhood to I know not what. CHAPTER XVII We have been married nearly three months, and are going on very comfortably. As yet no cross or angry words have arisen between us; all is smooth as unruffled waters. Though Marmaduke is, if anything, fonder of me than at first, he is perhaps a shade less slavishly attentive. For example, he can now enjoy his _Times_ at breakfast and read it straight through without raising his eyes between every paragraph, to make sure I am still behind the teapot and have not vanished into mid air, or to ask me tenderly if I would wish to do this or care to go there. He has also learned--which is more satisfactory still--that it is possible to know enjoyment even when I am out of sight. Two months of delicious thoughtless idleness we spend in Spain and Switzerland, and then--we pine for home. This latter secretly, and with a sworn determination that each will be the last to confess it. One calm glorious evening, however, after dinner, as I stand at the window of our hotel, gazing over the Lake of Geneva, something within me compels the following speech: "How beautiful Strangemore must be looking now!"--- I feel slightly doubtful of the wisdom of my words when they were uttered, and would have recalled them; but the encouraging amiability with which Marmaduke receives my remark speedily reassures me. "Yes," he says, with energy, "it never looks so well as just at this time of year." "So I should think." A long pause. "English scenery is always at its best in the autumn. After all, there is no place like England--I mean, of course for a continuance. Don't you agree with me, darling?" "I do indeed. Dear Briersley Wood! How fond Billy and I were of it. You remember the clump of nut-trees, 'Duke?" "Is it likely I should forget it?" sentimentally. "For my own part, I think the wood on the other side of Strangemore handsomer than Briersley; but of course it was too far away from Summerleas for you to know it well." Another pause, longer than the last, and more eloquent. "How I should like to see it--_now!_" I murmur, with faint emphasis and a heroically suppressed sigh. "Would you really?" rising eagerly, and coming into the embrasure of the window. "Would you like to get back, darling? Not yet for a little while, of course," with quick correction, "but later on, when---"