“Dear Mary,” said Agnes, whose nerves were fretted and her temper overcast, so that she could not take this unreasonable satisfaction with the calm she usually showed. “You are safe enough anywhere. Who would interfere with you? England is not like a wild country where people are in danger when they move.” Agnes had not been able to show her usual tolerance during this day. It had been very harassing and disagreeable to her, and the very fact of making all things easy for Mary, so that there should be nothing to distract her, reacted upon her guardian, and gave Agnes much more annoyance and trouble than an ordinary traveller. And she had hoped to spend so much of this day with Mar, finding her way again into his confidence, drawing back to her tender bosom the child to whom she had been a mother. Poor Agnes! she had looked forward to it so long, and now it had come to so sudden an end--all for nothing, she said to herself, in her weariness and discouragement; for the hope that had sustained her of a revolution in Mary’s shadowed intelligence seemed to float away in the childish content with which she contemplated the external comforts of home. Agnes knew, too, from the glances thrown at her in passing, that she would have a sullen household to manage--for to look for a week of ease and relaxation in the absence of “the family,” and then to have their capricious mistresses return upon their hands in a day, was too much for the flesh and blood of a house full of English servants. It was not wonderful if Miss Hill, deprived of her holiday too, and accustomed to stand between her sister and all annoyances, should lose heart a little at the end of this weary day. “I shall never leave home again,” said Mary in her gentle voice. “I am not fit to leave home. Everything seems right now that we are back. Even my dear old lord looks at me as if he were better pleased.” “It does not seem so to me,” said Agnes. “I know that he would have wished you to stay.” Lady Frogmore looked up at her sister with a mild surprise. “Do not scold me,” she said. “I would have done it if I could. For you, dear, if not for anything else. And to please poor Letitia----” “Oh Mary, Letitia!” “You are very hard upon her,” said Mary. “She is like me, she has been disappointed. She has not had what she might have expected. Oh, don’t ask me how, for it turns me all wrong. I have never understood it, and I never shall understand it. Keep me away from them, Agnes. Keep me away from them. Don’t make me think and think. My head turns round, but I never get any clearer. Oh, don’t ask me to go there again.”