"I owe you a great many apologies, dear. I behaved very badly the last time we were together, but I was upset, you know. You are a good woman to come and meet me in this way, and forgive me. I have meant to write to you many a time and say how sorry I was, but I put it off because--because"-- It is well that the pony was quiet, and knew its own way to Wenderholme, for when they got into an uncommonly retired lane, with very high hedges, her ladyship, who was driving, threw the reins down, and embraced the gentleman by her side in an extraordinary manner. Then came passionate tears, and after that she grew calmer. "What geese we were to fancy we could live separately!" she said. And then they talked incessantly the whole way. She asked him a thousand questions about his life abroad,--how he passed his evenings, whether he had found any society, and so on. As the Colonel told her about his humble, lonely life, she listened with perfect sympathy; and when he said that some people had been kind to him, and got him pupils, she wanted to know all about them. "I'm getting on famously," said the Colonel. "I'm earning nearly sixty francs a-week, and I pronounce French better than I used to do." CHAPTER XVII. A MORNING CALL. Since we are obliged to leave the vicarage now, the reader must be told the exact truth about Mrs. Stanburne's condition. It continued to give great anxiety for several weeks, and all her friends, even including the doctors, gave her up over and over again, believing that she had not more than an hour or two to live; yet she always passed through these times of danger, and gradually, very gradually, began to feel rather stronger in the month of December. The season of the year was not favorable to her, but Dr. Bardly hoped that if she could be sustained till the return of spring, she would regain her strength, at least in a great measure, and probably have several years of life still before her. She bore the winter better than had been expected, though without quitting her room at the vicarage, and in the month of April entered upon a convalescence which astonished all around her.