she looked as white as a ghost for want of air; and after a good deal of persuasion, she did go out sometimes of an afternoon, but she wouldn’t ask any one to walk with her, though there were plenty she might have asked—­the young ladies from the Rectory and others.  She preferred being alone, she told me, and I was glad that she should get the air and the change anyhow.  She brightened a little after this, but very little.  It was all of a sudden one day that she told me she was going away.  I wanted to go with her, but she said that couldn’t be.  I asked her where she was going, and she told me, after hesitating a little, that she was going to friends in London.  I knew she had been very fond of two young ladies that she went to school with at Lidford, whose father lived in London; and I thought it was to their house she was going.  I asked her if it was, and she said yes.  She made arrangements with the landlord about selling the furniture.  He is an auctioneer himself, and there was no difficulty about that.  The money was to be sent to her at a post-office in London.  I wondered at that, but she said it was better so.  She paid every sixpence that was owing, and gave me a handsome present over and above my wages; though I didn’t want to take anything from her, poor dear young lady, knowing that there was very little left after the Captain’s death, except the furniture, which wasn’t likely to bring much.  And so she went away about two days after she first mentioned that she was going to leave Lidford.  It was all very sudden, and I don’t think she bade good-bye to any one in the place.  She seemed quite broken down with grief in those two last days.  I shall never forget her poor pale face when she got into the fly.”

“How did she go?  From the station here?”

“I don’t know anything about that, except that the fly came to the cottage for her and her luggage.  I wanted to go to the station with her, to see her off, but she wouldn’t let me.”

“Did she mention me during the time that followed Captain Sedgewick’s death?”

“Only when I spoke about you, sir.  I used to try to comfort her, telling her she had you still left to care for her, and to make up for him she’d lost.  But she used to look at me in a strange pitiful sort of way, and shake her head.  ‘I am very miserable, Sarah,’ she would say to me; ’I am quite alone in the world now my dear uncle is gone, and I don’t know what to do.’  I told her she ought to look forward to the time when she would be married, and would have a happy home of her own; but I could never get her to talk of that.”

“Can you tell me the name and address of her friends in London—­the young ladies with whom she went to school?”

“The name is Bruce, sir; and they live, or they used to live at that time, in St. John’s-wood.  I have heard Miss Nowell say that, but I don’t know the name of the street or number of the house.”