"Well, well, there's no saying, and a girl of your age can't prophesy with regard to the future. Good-bye, little girl. God bless you! You have comforted me as you alone could to-day." CHAPTER XIX Aunt Penelope got better very quickly; having turned the corner, there were no relapses. Whether it was my society or whether she was easier and happier in her mind, or whatever the cause, she lost her cough, she lost her weakness, and became very much the Aunt Penelope of old. I watched her with a kind of fearful joy. I was glad she was so much better, and yet I trembled for the day, which I knew was approaching, when I must return to Hanbury Square. Aunt Penelope used to look at me with the steadfast gaze which I had found very trying when a little child, but which I now appreciated for its honesty and directness. It was as though she were reading my very heart. Meanwhile, no letters of any sort arrived; not one from my father, not one from Captain Carbury. I pretended to be very glad that Vernon did not write, but down deep in my heart of hearts I know that I was sorry; I know, too, that my heart beat quicker than usual when the postman's knock came to the door, and I know that that same heart went down low, low in my breast, when he passed by without any missive for me. At last there came an evening when Aunt Penelope and I had a long talk together. On that evening we settled the exact day when I was to return to my father and to Lady Helen. We were able to talk over everything now without any secret between us, and that fact was a great comfort to me. Once she spoke about my dear father's sin, but when she began on that subject I stopped her. "When you forgive, is it not said that you ought also to forget?" "What do you mean, Heather?" "Well, you have forgiven him, haven't you?" "I never said I had." "I think you have, and I think you must; and as you have forgiven, so, of course, you will absolutely forget." She made no reply for a long time. Then she rose, kissed me lightly on the forehead, and said: "You are a good child, Heather, you take after your poor mother. Now go out and help Jonas with the tea." I went out, and it was that very day that an extraordinary thing happened--that thing which, all of a sudden, changed my complete life.