Violet grew crimson at the reproof.  She was standing beneath the light, and turned away her head.

“Not if I were Harry’s betrothed?” she asked.

Aunt Martha looked up quickly.  She saw the glad, relieved expression of Harry’s face.

“If you are engaged to Harry, that is different, indeed!” she said.

It did make a difference in Aunt Martha’s thoughts.  In the first place, it gave her pleasure.  Harry was well-to-do in, the world.  He would make a good husband for Violet, and a kindly one.  She liked him better than she did Ernest.  She had supposed Violet would marry one or other of the boys, and, “just because things went at cross-grain in the world,” she had always supposed Violet would prefer Ernest.  She had never liked him herself.  He was always spinning cobwebs in his brain; she never could understand a word of his talk.  She did not believe he would live, and then Violet would be left a poor widow, as his mother had been left when her Hermann died.  She remembered all about that.  Ernest’s absence had encouraged her with regard to Harry; but two years had passed, and it seemed to her the two were no nearer an engagement.

But now it was settled; and if this foolish plan of Violet’s going to Italy had brought it about, the plan itself wore a different color.

Aunt Martha said no more of the impropriety.  She reserved her complainings for the subject of the trouble of getting Violet ready, all of a sudden, for such a voyage.

Little trouble fell to Aunt Martha’s share.  Violet went about it gladly.  She advised directly with a friend who could tell her from experience exactly how little she would want, while Harry completed all the business arrangements.  The activity, the adventure of it, suited Violet’s old tastes.  She had no dread of a solitary voyage, of passing through countries whose languages she could not speak.  Though burdened with anxiety for Ernest and for Harry, she went away with a glad heart.  Unconsciously to herself, she reversed her old exclamation, saying to herself,—­

“The men, indeed, should not have all the work, and the women all the play!”

The journey was in fact easily accomplished.  At another time Violet’s thoughts would have been occupied with the scenes she passed through.  Now she travelled as a devotee travels heavenward, making a monastery of the world, and convent-walls out of rays from Paradise.  She thought only of the end of her journey; and everything touched her through the throbbings of her heart.  On shipboard, she was busy with the poor old sick father whom his children were carrying home to his native land.  In passing through Paris, she used all her time in helping a sister to find a brother; because her energy was always helpful.  In travelling across France, she looked at her companions, asking herself to what home they were going, what friends they were bound to meet.  From Marseilles to Leghorn, she was the only one of the women-passengers who was not sick; and she was called upon for help in different languages, which she could understand only through the teachings of her heart.