Venetia once more found herself with no companion but her mother, but in vain she attempted to recall the feelings she had before experienced under such circumstances, and to revert to the resources she had before commanded.  No longer could she wander in imaginary kingdoms, or transform the limited world of her experience into a boundless region of enchanted amusement.  Her play-pleasure hours were fled for ever.  She sighed for her faithful and sympathising companion.  The empire of fancy yielded without a struggle to the conquering sway of memory.

For the first few weeks Venetia was restless and dispirited, and when she was alone she often wept.  A mysterious instinct prompted her, however, not to exhibit such emotion before her mother.  Yet she loved to hear Lady Annabel talk of Plantagenet, and a visit to the abbey was ever her favourite walk.  Sometimes, too, a letter arrived from Lord Cadurcis, and this was great joy; but such communications were rare.  Nothing is more difficult than for a junior boy at a public school to maintain a correspondence; yet his letters were most affectionate, and always dwelt upon the prospect of his return.  The period for this hoped-for return at length arrived, but it brought no Plantagenet.  His guardian wished that the holidays should be spent under his roof.  Still at intervals Cadurcis wrote to Cherbury, to which, as time flew on, it seemed destined he never was to return.  Vacation followed vacation, alike passed with his guardian, either in London, or at a country seat still more remote from Cherbury, until at length it became so much a matter of course that his guardian’s house should be esteemed his home, that Plantagenet ceased to allude even to the prospect of return.  In time his letters became rarer and rarer, until, at length, they altogether ceased.  Meanwhile Venetia had overcome the original pang of separation; if not as gay as in old days, she was serene and very studious; delighting less in her flowers and birds, but much more in her books, and pursuing her studies with an earnestness and assiduity which her mother was rather fain to check than to encourage.  Venetia Herbert, indeed, promised to become a most accomplished woman.  She had a fine ear for music, a ready tongue for languages; already she emulated her mother’s skill in the arts; while the library of Cherbury afforded welcome and inexhaustible resources to a girl whose genius deserved the richest and most sedulous cultivation, and whose peculiar situation, independent of her studious predisposition, rendered reading a pastime to her rather than a task.  Lady Annabel watched the progress of her daughter with lively interest, and spared no efforts to assist the formation of her principles and her taste.  That deep religious feeling which was the characteristic of the mother had been carefully and early cherished in the heart of the child, and in time the unrivalled writings of the great divines of our Church became a principal portion of her reading.