Day by day the absence of Agnes wore away, and day after day saw some business preparatory to departure dispatched. Sometimes the hours were winged by her having to pull about all the finery in her possession, and dividing it into portions, some to be abandoned for ever, some to be enveloped with reverend care in cotton and silver paper for her future use, and some to be given to the favoured Agnes. While such cares occupied her hands, her thoughts naturally enough hurried forward to the time when she should lay aside her weeds. This was a dress so hatefully unbecoming in her estimation, that she firmly believed the inventor of it must have been actuated by some feeling akin to that which instituted the horrible Hindoo rite of which she had heard, whereby living wives were sacrificed to their departed husbands. "Only!" she cried, bursting out into involuntary thanksgiving, "ours, thank God! is not for ever!" To appear for the first time in the fashionable world in this frightful disguise, was quite out of the question; and consequently she could not make her purposed visit to Clifton till the time was arrived for throwing them off, and till ... to use her own words, "lilacs and greys were possible".... Yet there were other considerations that had weight with her too. "His sister, however, shall just see me in my widow's weeds," thought she; "it may touch her heart perhaps, and must make her feel how very nearly we are related; ... but before any living soul out of the family can come near me, I will take care to look ... what I really am!... Six months!... it must, I suppose, be six months first!... Dreadful bore!" The first half of this probationary term was to be passed at Silverton,--that was already wearing fast away,--and for the latter part of it she determined to take lodgings in Exeter. "Yes ... it shall be Exeter!" she exclaimed, and then added, with a perfect quiver of delight, "Oh! what a difference now from what it was formerly!... How well I remember the time when a journey to Exeter appeared to me the very gayest thing in the world!... and now I should no more think of staying there than a queen would think of passing her life in her bed-room!" The more she meditated on the future, indeed, the more enamoured did she become of it, till at length, her affairs being very nearly all brought to a satisfactory conclusion, a restless sort of impatience seized upon her; and nearly a fortnight before the time fixed for the return of Agnes she wrote a very peremptory letter of recall, but altogether omitted to point out either the mode of conveyance, or the protection she deemed necessary for her during the journey.