It was a matter of course that Tamsin should cling to them in their fallen fortunes, and accompany them to their new home. For the future she, and a young maid-servant, would be the only domestics whom they would be able to keep. But Tamsin, although heretofore her position had merely been that of maid to the sisters, had had the advantage of a sound bringing-up at home, and in days gone by had often lamented that sundry of her domestic acquirements had no scope for their exercise. Now, however, she would be able to prove both her skill as a cook and her deftness as parlourmaid, and all the housewifely gifts on which she secretly prided herself would have an opportunity of being brought into play. At length she felt that she was in her proper element. As for the sisters, their sudden reverse of fortune was powerless to sour them or change them in any way. They remained just the same sweet and gracious ladies they had always been; and if such a thing were possible, they were beloved and respected more than ever by all who had the happiness of counting them among their friends. Their chief regret arose from the fact that they were no longer in a position to dispense their charities on the same scale as before. The cottage to which they had removed—known as Rose Mount—made a pleasant little home, and its seven or eight rooms were amply sufficient for their changed needs. It stood on a sunny slope fronting the south, where flowers of a score different kinds—especially the one from which the cottage took its name—grew and blossomed to perfection. The thick hedge of evergreens which divided it from the highroad imparted to it that air of privacy and seclusion which the sisters loved. With Ethel, meanwhile, affairs had by no means been at a standstill. Day succeeded day till they had merged into weeks after Launce Keymer’s sudden departure from St. Oswyth’s, and still Ethel looked in vain for a letter or a message of some kind from him. She had no knowledge of his whereabouts, and however extreme her desire might be to communicate with him, she felt that only as a last resource could she prevail upon herself to ask for information from her lover’s father. For one thing, she was by no means sure that Launce had broken the news of their engagement to Mr. Keymer senior. There had certainly been nothing in the note which the brewer wrote to Miss Thursby to indicate that such was the case. She was powerless to move.