Evelyn was about sixteen when this occurred, I nearly twelve.  The next year she left school and made her debut in society, and, through her machinations, no doubt, I was sent away to a distant boarding-school for two years, coming home only at holiday intervals thereafter to my dearest baby, my home, my parent, and narrow circle of friends, and finding Miss Erle more and more in possession of my father’s confidence, even to the arrangement of his papers and participation in the knowledge of his business transactions, and entirely installed as the head of the house, which post she maintained ever afterward indomitably.

Singularly enough, however, Mr. Bainrothe seemed secretly to prefer me at this period, however much he openly inclined to her, and he lost no occasion of privately speaking to me in rapturous terms (such as I never heard him employ in the presence of Evelyn and my father) of his only son, then absent in Germany engaged in the prosecution of his studies, but to return home, he told me, to remain, as soon as he had completed his majority.

It was only through our knowledge of his son’s age, and his admissions as to the time of his own early marriage, that we arrived at any estimate of Mr. Bainrothe’s years; for, as I have said, Time, in his case, had omitted what he so rarely forgets to imprint—­his sign manual on his exterior.

CHAPTER III.

The school to which I was sent was half a day’s journey from the city of our residence, situated in a small but ancient town of Revolutionary notoriety.  The river, very wide at that point, was shaded by willow-trees to some extent along its banks, immediately in front of the Academy of St. Mark’s, and beyond it to a considerable distance on either hand.  The town itself was an old-fashioned, primitive village rather than burgh, quaintly built, and little adorned by modern taste or improvement; but the air was fine and elastic, the water unexceptionable, and bathing and boating were among our privileged amusements.  Among other less useful accomplishments, I there acquired that of swimming expertly; and, as a place of exile, this quaint town answered as well as any other for the intended purpose.

For, notwithstanding my father’s assurances that Dr. Pemberton had recommended change of air—­to some degree true, of course—­and that he himself believed a public course of study would exhaust me less than my solitary lessons, to which I gave such undivided attention, and notwithstanding Evelyn’s professions of regret at the necessity of parting with me, and Mrs. Austin’s belief that the “baby was killing me by inches,” since she took it into her head to sleep with no one else, and to play half the night, and to stay with me all day besides, I felt myself “ostracized.”

The whole matter was so sudden that I scarcely knew what to make of it.  Mr. Bainrothe alone let in a little light upon the subject by one remark, unintentionally, no doubt: