'So at last I am able to once more reach my dear friend's side,' said Pauline, seating herself in close proximity. She saw at once the kind of reception in store for her, and though the course on which she had determined rendered her independent of Mrs. Calverley's feelings towards her, she was too good a diplomatist to provoke where provocation was unnecessary. 'You certainly have not hurried yourself to get there,' said Mrs. Calverley, clipping the words out from between her lips. 'I have now been left entirely to myself for--' 'Do not render me more wretched by going into the details of the time of my absence,' said Pauline; 'it has impressed itself upon me with sufficient distinctness already.' 'I should have thought, madame,' said Mrs. Calverley unrelentingly, 'that strictly brought up as you have always represented yourself to be, you would have understood, however pleasantly your time may have been occupied, that your duty required you to be in this house.' 'However pleasantly my time may have been occupied!' cried Pauline. 'Each word that you utter is an additional stab. It is duty and duty alone which has called me away from your side. It is duty which imposes a farther task upon me, cruel, heart-rending task, which I have yet to declare to you! And you, who have been a life-long martyr to the discharge of your own duty, ought to have some pity for me in the discharge of mine.' These last words were excellently chosen for her purpose. That she was a martyr, and an unrecognised martyr, was the one text on which Mrs. Calverley preached: to acknowledge her in that capacity was to pay her the greatest possible compliment. So, considerably mollified, she replied, 'If I felt annoyed at your absence, Palmyre, it was for your sake more than for my own. The loss of your society is a deprivation to me, but I am accustomed to deprivations and to crosses of all kinds. I devoted myself to my husband--and had he listened to the counsel I gave him, he would be here at this moment--and I am prepared to devote myself to my son.' 'Ah,' said Pauline with earnestness, 'Monsieur Martin!' 'Yes, Palmyre,' said Mrs. Calverley; 'Monsieur Martin, as you speak of him in your foreign way, the Reverend Martin Gurwood, as he is generally called. I am prepared to devote myself to him. I have told him that I will remove him from that desolate country parish, and establish him here in London in a church of his own, that he shall live with me in this house, share my wealth, and dispense my charities.' 'Martin in London,' thought Pauline to herself. 'Then it is in London that Alice and I must take up our abode.' Then she said aloud, 'And what does Monsieur Martin say to this grand, this generous proposition, madame?'