"They will go," she said, "and it will be for the best. Either they or I must have gone, and I suppose you would prefer it should be they. It is their duty to say where they purpose going, and what they purpose doing. It will be time enough for you to refuse your consent, if the place of selection be an objectionable one, when they tell us where it is." Two days after that conversation Mr. and Mrs. Creswell were sitting together after luncheon, when Maude entered the room. She took no notice of Marian, but said to her uncle, "Gertrude and I are going away to-morrow, uncle, for some time, if not for ever. You won't be astonished to hear it, I know, but it is our duty to tell you." "Well, Maude, I--going away--I confess, not entirely news to me," said Mr. Creswell, hopelessly feeble; "where are you going, child?" "We have accepted an invitation we have received, uncle." "An invitation? I did not know you knew any one, Maude. From some of your old school companions?" "No, uncle; from Lady Caroline Mansergh--a friend of Mr. Benthall's and Mr. Joyce's, uncle." Marian looked up, and the light of triumph faded out of her eyes. It was but an incomplete victory, after all! CHAPTER XXXII. THE SHATTERING OF THE IDOL. The fact that his nieces had actually left the shelter of his roof, although, as he had hitherto believed, that result had been brought about by their own wilfulness and impatience of control, came upon Mr. Creswell with almost stunning force. True, Marian had mentioned to him that it was impossible that she and the girls could ever live together in amity--true, that he himself had on more than one occasion been witness of painful scenes between them--true, that the girls' departure had been talked of for a week past as an expected event, and that the preparations for it lay before his eyes; but he had not realised the fact; his mind was so taken up with the excitement of the coming election contest, that he had scarcely noticed the luggage through which he had occasionally to thread his way, or, if he had noticed it, had regarded its presence there as merely a piece of self-assertion on the part of impetuous Maude or silly Gertrude, determined to show, foolish children as they were, that they were not to be put down by Marian's threats, but were ready to start independently whenever such a step might become necessary. That Marian would ever allow them to take this step, Mr. Creswell never imagined; he thought there had always been smouldering embers of warfare, needing but a touch to burst into a blaze, between his wife and his nieces; he knew that they had never "hit it," as he phrased it; but his opinion of Marian was so high, and his trust in her so great, that he could not believe she would be sufficiently affected by these "women's tiffs" as to visit them with such disproportionate punishment. Even in the moment of adieu, when Gertrude, making no attempt to hide her tears, had sobbingly kissed him and clung about