Mrs. Purcell was looking on with unfeigned grief at her daughter's preparations for departure. Aggie had gone down to Queningford, not for a flying visit, but to spend the greater part of the autumn. She and Arthur had had to abandon some of the arrangements they had planned together; and, though he had still insisted in general terms on Aggie's two years' rest, the details had been left to her. Thus it happened that a year of the rest-cure had hardly rolled by before Aggie had broken down, in a way that had filled them both with the gravest anxieties for the future. For if she broke down when she was resting, what would she do when the two years were up and things had to be more or less as they were before? Aggie was so frightened this time that she was glad to be packed off to her mother, with Willie and Dick and Emmy and the baby. The "girls," Kate and Eliza, had looked after them, while Aggie lay back in the warm lap of luxury, and rested for once in her life. All Aggie's visits had ended in the same way. The same letter from home, the same firm and simple statement: "Arthur wants me. I must go," and Aggie was gone before they had had a look at her. "John and Susie will be quite offended." "I can't help it. Arthur comes before John and Susie, and he wants me." She had always been proud of that--his wanting her; his inability to do without her. "I don't know," she said, "what he _will_ have done without me all this time." Her mother looked at her sharply, a look that, though outwardly concentrated on Aggie, suggested much inward criticism of Aggie's husband. "He must learn to do without you," she said, severely. "I'm not sure that I want him to," said Aggie, and smiled. Her mother submitted with a heavy heart. "My dear," she whispered, "if you had married John Hurst we shouldn't have _had_ to say good-bye." "I wouldn't have taken him from Susie for the world," said Aggie, grimly. She knew that her mother had never liked poor Arthur. This knowledge prevented her from being sufficiently grateful to John for always leaving his trap (the trap that was once to have been hers) at her disposal. It was waiting to take her to the station now. Aggie had only seen her sister, Mrs. John Hurst, once since they had both married. Whenever Aggie was in Queningford, John and Susie were in Switzerland, on the honeymoon that, for the happy, prosperous couple, renewed itself every year. This year it was agreed that, when the Hursts came up to Islington for the Grand Horse-Show in the spring, they were to be put up at the Gattys' in Camden Town. Aggie was excited and a little alarmed at the prospect of this visit. Susie was accustomed to having everything very nice and comfortable about her, and she would be critical of the villa and its ways. And, then, it would be awkward seeing John. She smiled. It always had been awkward seeing John.