Viola grew frantic with secret impatience of her life. She decided to fly from her embarrassments by seeking change of scene, as advised by the thoughtful physician. A trip to the South was at first projected, but suddenly Viola changed her mind and decided to go abroad. She wanted to put the whole width of the ocean between herself and every haunting reminder of the past. She asked her father if he could accompany her; but he frankly said that nothing was more impossible, although nothing would have pleased him better. “You see, my dear, I can not desert my post,” he explained. “This year of 1896 will witness the presidential campaign, and I must be, as ever, in the thick of the political fight. My party will need me, and I must remain at the post of duty, much as I would love to accompany you. Can you not make the tour chaperoned by your aunt and a maid?” Mrs. Herman, who was timid and nervous, cried out in alarm that she would as soon be asked to cross the river of Styx as the dangerous Atlantic. No, no; Viola must take some one else. She was getting too old to go junketing about the world, and would rather stay at home and keep her brother comfortable. Viola was discomfited at first, then a bright thought flashed into her mind. “Why, there is Mrs. Maxwell!” she cried. “The dear old lady is quite alone in her little cottage, because Mae went away yesterday to make a long visit to some country relations.” Judge Van Lew answered quite affably: “Take Mrs. Maxwell, if you choose, my dear. It would be a very proper arrangement.” And when Viola went to see about it she did not find her hard to persuade, she had such pleasant recollections of two previous journeys across the ocean in better days. “One was my bridal trip, dear, and the other when Rolfe was fifteen years old. Ah, how my poor boy enjoyed that summer abroad!” she sighed, wiping away the quick, starting tears. Viola wept, too, in sympathy, and said, tenderly: “We will visit all the places he liked best, and you shall tell me all he said and did there. It will be like getting better acquainted with my husband, whom I knew such a little while.” It was setting a pleasant task for the bereaved mother, this rehearsing the past sayings and doings of her beloved dead. Such stories as she could tell Viola of Rolfe’s bright ways, his manliness, his tenderness, his bravery, were enough to thrill any woman’s heart, and Viola grew to know him well, now he was gone, and the aching cry of her heart grew more intense with time: “Could ye come back to me, Douglas, Douglas!” In the golden May-time they journeyed across the ocean, leaving the little cottage boarded up and deserted, so that weeks later, when the postman opened the gate with a letter that would have brought gladness to the mourner’s heart, there was no one to receive it, and the neighbors said Mrs. Maxwell had gone away weeks before, and they did not know her address.