“You must come home, Dolly,” she said. “You must, indeed. You will get worse and worse if you stay here. I will speak to Miss MacDowlas myself. You say she is kind to you.” “Dear little woman,” said Dolly, closing her eyes as she let her head rest upon the girl's shoulder. “Dear, kind little woman! indeed it will be best for me to stay here. It is as I said,--indeed it is. If I were to go home I should _die!_ Oh, don't you _know_ how cruel it would be! To sit there in my chair and see his old place empty,--to sit and hear the people passing in the street and know I should never hear his footstep again,--to see the door open again and again, and know he would never, never pass through. It would break my heart,--it would break my heart!” “It is broken now!” cried Aimée, in a burst of grief, and she could protest no more. But she remained as long as she well could, petting and talking to her. She knew better than to offer her threadbare commonplace comfort, so she took refuge in talking of life at Bloomsbury Place,--about Tod and Mollie and Toinette, and the new picture Phil was at work upon. But it was a hard matter for her to control herself sufficiently to conceal that she was almost in an agony of anxiousness and foreboding. What was she to do with this sadly altered Dolly, the mainspring of whose bright, spirited life was gone? How was she to help her if she could not restore Grif,--it was only Grif she wanted,--and where was he? It was just as she had always said it would be,--without Grif, Dolly was Dolly no longer,--for Grif's sake her faithful, passionate girl's heart was breaking slowly. Lady Augusta, encountering her ex-governess in the drawing-room that evening, raised her eyeglass to that noble feature, her nose, and condescended a questioning inspection, full of disapproval of the heavy, well-falling black silk and the Elizabethan frill. “You are looking shockingly pale and thin,” she said. Dolly glanced at her reflection in an adjacent mirror. She only smiled faintly, in silence. “I was not aware that you were ill,” proceeded her ladyship. “I cannot say that I am ill,” Dolly answered. “How is Phemie?” “Euphemia,” announced Lady Augusta, “is well, and I _trust_” as if she rather doubted her having so far overcome old influences of an evil nature,--“I _trust_ improving, though I regret to hear from her preceptress that she is singularly deficient in application to her musical lessons.” Dolly thought of the professor with the lumpy face, and smiled again. Phemie's despairing letters to herself sufficiently explained why her progress was so slow. “I hope,” said her ladyship to Miss MacDowlas, afterward, “that you are satisfied with Dorothea's manner of filling her position in your household.” “I never was so thoroughly satisfied in my life,” returned the old lady, stiffly. “She is a very quickwitted, pleasantly natured girl, and I am extremely fond of her.”