Some days had passed, and the Doctor had taken his departure, confining himself now to a couple of calls per diem. Lady Gernon was progressing fast towards recovery, and Sir Murray, very quiet and staid, was again up; but, so far as the servants knew, and did not omit to tattle about, he had had no interview with her ladyship. But the heads of the establishment were not the only ones in that house sore at heart, for Jane Barker, in her times of retirement, shed many a bitter tear. She never asked about him, but there were those amongst the domestics who heard the news, and soon bore it to her, that John Gurdon had left the neighbouring town where he had been staying, and was gone to Liverpool, with the intention of proceeding to Australia: in which announcement there was some little truth and a good deal of fiction, the shade of truth being that John Gurdon was going abroad, though not in the way he had published. "And never to write and ask me to see him again," sobbed Jane--"never to say `good-bye.' Oh, what a blessing life would be if there was no courting in it! as is a curse to everybody, as I've seen enough to my cost, without counting my own sufferings." Jane was bewailing her fate at the open window one night when these thoughts passed through her breast for the hundredth time. Certainly, there was a pleasant coolness in the night air, but it is open to doubt whether poor Jane had not nourished a hope that, wrong as it was on her part, besides being unbecoming, John might by chance have repented and turned back just to say a few words of parting. She confessed once that she wished he would, and then she would wish him God-speed, and if he wanted ten or twenty pounds, she would give notice at the savings' bank, draw it out, and send it to him by letter. But not one word would she say to stop him from going--no, not _one_ word. He should go, and no doubt it would do him good, and break him of all his bad habits, and "perhaps," she said, with a sob, "he may come back a good man, and we may be--" "Tst, Jane!--tst!" For a few moments she could not move, the sound was so unexpected. She had hoped that he might come back, but for days past she had given it up, when now, making her heart leap with a joy she could not conceal, came the welcome sound from the darkness beneath where she leaned. She had not heard him come, for the reason that Mr John Gurdon had been there for an hour before she had leaned out, and he had been stayed from announcing his presence sooner by a light in a neighbouring window; but now, that apparently all was still in the place, he gave utterance to the above signal, one which he had to repeat before it was responded to by a whispered ejaculation.