She fell asleep, then woke at dawn with a low cry. She had been dreaming of Lucy and Frank; had seen their faces, as she had seen them the day before, bright with the glow of the light which never was on sea and land. Oh, she had always known, nay, hoped, that this, or rather something akin to this, would come; yet sharp was the pang that ran through her at the recollection. It had always seemed to her highly improbable that her sisters, portionless as they were, should remain unmarried. One day, she had always told herself, they would go away, and she and Fanny would be left alone. She did not wish it otherwise. She had a feminine belief in love as the crown and flower of life; yet, as the shadow of the coming separation fell upon her, her spirit grew desolate and afraid; and, lying there in the chill grey morning, she wept very bitterly. FOOTNOTE: [A] From _Lawn Tennis_. [Illustration: Decoration] [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER XI. A CONFIDENCE. _It may be one will dance to-day, And dance no more to-morrow; It may be one will steal away, And nurse a lifelong sorrow; What then? The rest advance, evade, Unite, disport, and dally, Re-set, coquet, and gallopade, Not less--in "Cupid's Alley."_ AUSTIN DOBSON. "Mr. Darrell has sent us a card for his Private View," announced Gertrude, as they sat at tea one Saturday afternoon in the sitting-room. "Oh, let me look, Gerty," cried Phyllis, taking possession of the bit of pasteboard. "'The Misses Lorimer and friends.' Why Conny might go with us." Constance Devonshire had dropped in upon them unexpectedly that afternoon, after an absence of several weeks. She was looking wretchedly ill. Her usually blooming complexion had changed to a curious waxen colour; her round face had fallen away; there were dark hollows under the unnaturally brilliant eyes. "I should rather like to go, if you think you may take me," she said; then added, with an air of not very spontaneous gaiety; "I suppose it will be what the society papers call a 'smart function.'" Stoicism, it has been observed, is a savage virtue. There was something of savagery in Conny's fierce reserve; in the way in which she resolutely refused to acknowledge, what was evident to the most casual observer, that there was something seriously amiss with her health and spirits. "Is it not fortunate," said Lucy, "that Uncle Sebastian should have sent us that cheque? Now we shall be able to get ourselves some decent clothes." "I mean to have a grey cachemire walking-dress, and my evening dress shall be grey too," announced Phyllis, who was one of the rare people who can wear that colour to advantage. Fanny, who had rigid ideas about mourning, declared with an air of severity that her own new outfit should be black, then sighed, as though to call attention to the fact of her constancy to the memory of the dead, in the face of the general heedlessness.