we weren’t sure this walking trip of yours will do you more good than anything else, we wouldn’t let you leave us, for we have loved having you.  We’ll write to you at Aosta, where you will be staying for a couple of days, and give you our itinerary, with lots of addresses.  By that time, you too will have made up your mind about your route.  You will have decided whether to branch off among the bye-ways, or go straight on south, although you mustn’t go too quickly, and get there too early——­”

“I don’t believe I shall have made up my mind to anything in Aosta,” said I gloomily.  “I feel that I shall still be unequal to that, or any other mental effort, and what is to become of me, Heaven, Joseph, and Finois alone know.”

“Now, isn’t it funny, I feel exactly the opposite?  Something seems to tell me that at Aosta, if not before, you will, so to speak, ’read your title clear,’” said Molly, with aggravating cheerfulness.  “As soon as you’ve settled what way to take, you must write or wire; and who knows but by-and-bye we shall cross each other’s path again, on the road to the Riviera?”

I revived a little.  “I don’t think you told me that you were going to run down there.  Jack was talking about keeping mostly to Switzerland, I thought.”

“But Switzerland will turn a cold shoulder upon us, as the autumn comes to spoil its disposition, and we were saying only this morning that it would be fine to make a rush to the Riviera, for a wind up to our trip.”

“You see, Molly had a letter——­” Jack had begun to speak with an absent-minded air, but suddenly recovered himself.  “We don’t care to get back to England till November,” he hastily went on.  “I want Molly to have some hunting and a jolly round of country houses just to see what we can do to make an English winter tolerable.  We’ve got four or five ripping invitations, and in January Mistress Molly herself will have to play hostess to a big house party, at Brighthelmston Park, which the mater and governor have lent us till next season.”

If he had wanted to take my mind off an inadvertence, he could scarcely have manoeuvred better, but why the inadvertence (if it had been one) could concern me, it was difficult to imagine.

There was a friendly dispute as to whether Molly and jack should see me off, or whether I should wish them good-bye before starting on my journey; but in the end it was settled that I should be the one to leave first.  Perhaps they believed that, if left to myself, I should never start at all; perhaps they wished to add photographs of the mule-party to their Kodak collection, already large; or perhaps they thought only how to make the parting pleasantest for me, since I had no one, and they had each other.

[Illustration:  “THERE WAS A PANG WHEN I TURNED MY BACK".]