‘I never ought to have listened to you,’ said Charlotte.  ’It was not right by neither of us; so please say no more.’

‘If you could understand—­’

‘I don’t want to understand nothing.’

Charlotte drove him on with the box till they were close to the fly, and then, leaving him and the man to adjust the packing, flew back to announce that all was ready for her mistress.  The last kisses were given to the children, and a message left with Charlotte for her master, who was in school; then she stood with Miss Catharine in her arms, and saw the fly drive off.

‘Well,’ said Mrs. Cook, ’that butler thinks himself a great beau, no doubt!  I asked him whether he thought you pretty, Charlotte, and he said you hadn’t no air nor no complexion.  It’s as I tells you—­ nobody will never take no notice of you while you goes about so dowdy.’

Charlotte did not know whether she was glad that the cook could not tease her about Delaford, or mortified to be supposed beneath his notice.  No air, forsooth!  She who had often heard it said that she looked like any lady!

‘But oh,’ said Charlotte to herself, as she spent her daily five minutes at noonday in quiet thought, ’am I not a poor silly thing not to be thankful that care has been round me this time, and that I have not been let to do nothing giddy nor false by Tom, whatever I may have thought!’

Meanwhile, Isabel had found it much harder to part with her babies for three weeks than it had seemed at the first proposal; and there were tears in her eyes as she gazed at the peaked, red-tiled roof of the old grammar-school, and reckoned the days and hours before her husband would join her.

Other associations revived when she found herself at Estminster, and was received with shrieks of joy, caresses, and exclamations too fond and foolish to bear repetition; and then the pale Louisa rested against her, stroking her hand, and Lady Conway fondled her, and Virginia, looking formed and handsome, retreated a little way to study her and declare that she was the same Isabel, neither altered nor grown older—­it was all a dream that she had ever left them.

She almost felt it so herself, so entirely did she fit into the old habits, the little quiet dinner (only it seemed unusually good), the subsequent closing round the fire with the addition of Miss King and Louisa, the easy desultory chat, the books with Mudie’s stamp lying about, the music which must be practised.  It was very like being Miss Conway still; and when she awoke the next morning to find it late, and to the impulse of hurrying up, or not hurrying, expecting to find James making breakfast himself, and cross at being made late for school, she turned on her pillow, half doubting whether she had dreamt these two years in one long night, and remembering that captive mermaid, who had but to resume her maritime headgear and return to her native element, to forget