And it was Gertrude, more than any of them, who appreciated the new state of things. She was beginning, for the first time, to find her own level; to taste the sweets of genuine work and genuine social intercourse. Fastidious and sensitive as she was, she had yet a great fund of enjoyment of life within her; of that impersonal, objective enjoyment which is so often denied to her sex. Relieved of the pressing anxieties which had attended the beginning of their enterprise, the natural elasticity of her spirits asserted itself. A common atmosphere of hope and cheerfulness pervaded the little household at Upper Baker Street. The evening of which I write was one of the last of May, and Frank had come in to bid them farewell, before setting out the next morning for a short holiday in Cornwall; "the old folks," as he called his parents, growing impatient of their only son's prolonged absence. "The country will be looking its very best," cried Frank, who loved his beautiful home; "the sea a mass of sapphire with the great downs rolling towards it. I mean to have a big swim the very first thing. No one knows what the sea is like, till they have been to Cornwall. And St. Colomb--I wish you could see St. Colomb! Why, the whole place is smaller than Baker Street. The little bleak, grey street, with the sou'wester blowing through it at all times and seasons--there are scarcely two houses on the same level. And then-- "'The little grey church on the windy hill,' and beyond, the great green vicarage garden, and the vicarage, and the dear old folks looking out at the gate." He rose reluctantly to go. "One day I hope you will see it for yourselves--all of you." With which impersonal statement, delivered in a voice which rather belied its impersonal nature, Frank dropped Lucy's hand, which he had been holding with unnecessary firmness, and departed abruptly from the room. Gertrude looked rather anxiously towards her sister, who sat quietly sewing, with a little smile on her lips. How far, she wondered, had matters gone between Lucy and Frank? Was the happiness of either or both irrevocably engaged in the pretty game which they were playing? Heaven forbid that her sisterly solicitude should lead her to question the "intentions" of every man who came near them; a hideous feminine practice abhorrent to her very soul. Yet, their own position, Gertrude felt, was a peculiar one, and she could not but be aware of the dangers inseparable from the freedom which they enjoyed; dangers which are the price to be paid for all close intimacy between young men and women. After all, what do women know about a man, even when they live opposite him? And do not men, the very best of them, allow themselves immense license in the matter of loving and riding away?