But meditations, resolutions, regrets, and preparations notwithstanding, the day of Katherine’s departure arrived.  It was a bright, glowing afternoon, and the Thursday fixed for the boating party.  Mrs. Liddell junior had expended much eloquence to no purpose, as she well knew it would be, in trying to persuade her sister-in-law to postpone the commencement of what the little widow was pleased to call her “penal servitude,” and accompany her to Twickenham.

She departed, however, without her, looking her very best, and uttering many promises to come and see Katie soon, to try her powers of pleasing on that dreadful old uncle of ours, to bring the dear boys, and see if they would not cut out their aunty, etc.

Mrs. Liddell and her daughter were most thankful to have the last few hours together, and yet they said little, and that chiefly respecting past days which they had enjoyed together—­little excursions on the Elbe or in the neighborhood of Florence; a couple of months once passed at Siena, which was a mental epoch to Katherine, who was then about fifteen; promises to write; and tender queries on the mother’s side if she had remembered this or that.

The little boys clung to her, Charlie in tears, Cecil very solemn.  Both had taken up the sort of camera-obscura image of their elders’ views which children contrive to obtain so mysteriously without hearing anything distinct concerning them, and both considered “Uncle John” a sort of modern ogre, only restrained by the policeman outside from making a daily meal of the nearest infant school, and sure to gobble up aunty some day.  Charlie trembled at the thought; Cecil pondered profoundly how, by the judicious arrangement of a trap-door in the middle of his room, he might carry out the original idea of Jack the Giant-Killer.

“Pray don’t think of coming with me, mother,” said Katherine, seeing Mrs. Liddell take out her bonnet.  “I could not bear to think of your lonely drive back.  Trust me to myself.  I am not going to be either frightened or cast down, and I will write to-morrow.”

“Then I must let you go, darling!  On Sunday next, Katie, we shall see you.”

A long, fond embrace, and Mrs. Liddell was indeed alone.

CHAPTER VI.

“SHIFTING SCENES.”

Parting is often worst to those who stay behind.  Imagination paints the trials and difficulties of the one who has put out to sea as far worse than the reality, while variety and action brace the spirit of him who goes forth.

Katherine’s reception, however, was paralyzing enough.

Nothing was in her favor save the mellow brightness of the fine warm evening, though from its south-east aspect the parlor at Legrave Crescent was already in shadow.  There, in his usual seat beside the fire—­for, though a miser, John Liddell had a fire summer and winter—­sat the old man watching the embers, in himself a living refrigerator.