So the Bath house with its quaint furniture was let, and in the end of March, after a few weeks given to necessary arrangements, the two girls found themselves once more under Mr. and Mrs. Bryce’s hospitable roof, in their luxurious town mansion. A double bedroom, opening into a dainty small sitting-room or boudoir, was assigned to them, and here they loved to pass much of their time. Mrs. Bryce was now, of course, in a full swing of engagements; and she would greatly have liked to drag Polly with her wherever she went, despite the recent death of Polly’s grandmother, but for Polly’s resolute resistance. “Well, well, well, my dear—all in good time,” Mrs. Bryce had said, after some discussion. “To be sure, the old lady was tolerable close related, and there’s no doubt your feelings does you credit; but I can assure you, ’tis time you was settled in life with a husband of your own, and a _mènage_, and a suitable equipage, and the rest of it. And as for Captain Ivor, I protest I’ve no sort of patience with the man. Why, ’tis eighteen months at the least since ever a word reached us of Captain Ivor and his doings; and by this time there’s no sort of question that he’s forgot all about you, and found himself a wife, and belike he’s been married this year and more past. So ’tis good time you too should forget all about him.” Polly was thinking over these utterances, as she sat before the drawing-room fire, dressed in white muslin, with black sash and ribbons. In the first decade of the nineteenth century white muslin was counted to be the correct attire for a girl, morning, noon and evening, summer and winter, no matter what the weather might be. Polly looked rather blue and chilly, with her bare arms and shoulders, the latter covered but lightly with a thin black scarf. She was as pretty as ever, but her colouring was less brilliant than of old, while the sweet eyes contained a touch of sadness. Molly, dressed to match, though with a good deal more of white and less of black, was busily reading to herself on the other side of the fireplace. It was a cold April afternoon, five o’clock dinner being over. Mr. and Mrs. Bryce were out on one of their innumerable engagements. Mr. Bryce—poor man!—would greatly have preferred a quiet evening at home with the girls to the most brilliant assemblage of rank and fashion; but his relentless wife dragged him in her wake—an unwilling and helpless victim—to dinner-parties, balls, crushes, routs, innumerable. “Molly, the Admiral is at home again. ’Tis a fit of the gout, Mrs. Peirce tells me. I saw her to-day, and she is vexed, for it makes him roar like a wild beast. And though ’tis doubtless true, as the faculty say, that the gout sets a man up again, yet the setting up is by no means pleasant. And Mrs. Peirce and the Admiral are sorely troubled about Will, for since he was taken prisoner, all that long while ago, never a word has reached them about him. O this weary war!”