"I suppose," she began, looking at Mrs Chester with the brown eyes which had grown so pathetic in their gaze in the last few weeks, "I suppose I can travel now, as soon as it can be arranged. I shall have to be carried about at each of the changes, and it must be planned ahead in this busy season. I must speak to Miss Bruce, and ask her what I had better do." Mrs Chester bent forward and poked the fire in a flurried, embarrassed manner; she knitted her brows, and her rosy face grew a shade deeper in colour. "Er--yes," she assented vaguely. "Of course; but Evie, dear, I have been waiting to talk to you about something which has been very much on my mind lately. We are leaving on Thursday, Rhoda and I, and are having a through carriage and every possible appliance to make the journey easy, and I thought that it would be so much simpler for you, dear, to travel with us, and spend a few weeks at the Chase before going home!" Evie smiled, with the languid courtesy with which an invalid listens to an impossible proposition. "It is very kind of you," she said. "Some day I shall be glad to come, but not at present, thank you. I am not well enough to pay visits." "But my child, it would not be like an ordinary visit; you should do exactly as you would in your own home--stay in bed, or get up, as you pleased, and make out your own programme for the day. You know me now, and can surely understand that you need feel no ceremony in coming to my house." "No, indeed! You have been so kind to me all this time, that I should be ungrateful if I did not realise that. I would rather be with you than anyone else outside my own family, but--but--" the tears gathered and rolled down the pale cheeks--"Oh, surely you understand that just now I want to be at home with my own mother and father!" "Yes, I do understand, poor dear; it would be unnatural if you felt anything else; but listen, Evie, it is for your parents' sake, as well as for your own, that I urge you to come. You need constant care and nursing, and cheering up, and it would be very difficult for them to manage all this just now. Your mother is overworked as it is, and has already one invalid on her hands; but if you come to us, the whole household will be at your service. My kind old Mary shall be your nurse, and wait upon you hand and foot. I will drive you about so that you can get the air without fatigue, and you shall have your couch carried into the conservatory off the drawing-room, and lie there among the flowers which you love so much. Every comfort that money can buy shall be yours to help to make you strong again. I say it in no spirit of boasting, dear, for we have been poor ourselves, and owe our riches to no merit of our own. We look upon them as a trust from God, to be used for the good of others even more than ourselves, and surely no one had ever a nearer, stronger claim--" Her voice broke off tremblingly, and Evie looked at her with a troubled glance.