But as the days wore on the two grew nearer and nearer to one another. Catherine’s sore and wounded heart, still bleeding from the effort of her great sacrifice, found wonderful solace in the care and attention she lavished on her aunt. The absolute necessity of some object of solicitude and tenderness is more obvious to most women than the desire for a particular lover. If Catherine had felt that Granville had any need of her she would not have run away from him; the liberty to love was far more to her than the desire for his devotion to herself. But that brief experience had wonderfully deepened and expanded her character. Before that, she would have viewed her aunt’s idiosyncrasies with some contempt and treated them with impatient forbearance. Now a great flood of pity filled her soul for this unhappy woman, who had wrecked her life by her own self-will, and yet bore the result with such unexampled fortitude. And Cicely, on the other hand, found that after all she had not forgotten how to love. After the tragedy of her youth she had made the repression of her emotions her great end; naturally ardent, she had striven to show the world an impassive and indifferent countenance: now, on the brink of dissolution, the long-suppressed fire burst forth. She was more like the Cicely of her youth than she had been for forty years. Her tenderness manifested itself in a hundred ways. She had made Catherine, immediately after her arrival, send in the resignation of her post; and though the girl remonstrated with her, and lamented her loss of independence, she only replied that she could not possibly do without her, and that it was her plain duty to remain where she was. But the head mistress was travelling in Norway, so that the letter did not reach her at once, and was forwarded from place to place in pursuit of her. Catherine knew that if Granville or Margaret should wish to find her, they would at once apply at the address on the visiting card that she had given the latter—the address of her rooms. She was, therefore, careful to avoid telling the landlady where she had gone, sending directions to have her few belongings forwarded to the cloak-room at Victoria, whence they were afterwards despatched to her. In this way she thought she had concealed her retreat, at least for the present. For the discovery of a rich aunt had not at all altered Catherine’s sentiments or caused her to regret her resolution. She was quite as sure as Margaret that Granville’s interests could best be advanced by a marriage with Lady Blanche, and, in spite of his note, was by no means convinced of his attachment to herself. The idea that in the event of her aunt’s death she would be the probable heiress had not occurred to her, nor did she realise what this might mean, till one evening about a fortnight after her arrival, when the two women were sitting together in the twilight.