be impossible for us to leave home at present," her aunt went
on. "If you're determined to go, I must get you some one to travel with,
or you must have an elderly maid-companion. Perhaps that would be best.
One can't always find friends travelling at the time they're wanted."

"Mary isn't such a baby that she ought to need looking after," said
Elinor. "She's nearly twenty-five--as old as I am--and you don't mind my
going to Exeter alone."

Elinor was twenty-eight. When she was a child she had assumed airs of
superiority on the strength of her age, Mary remembered, but now she and
her cousin seemed suddenly to match their years. Mary was glad of this,
however, and bolstered Elinor's argument by admitting her own maturity.
"I don't want a companion-maid, please," she said, with the mingling of
meekness and violent resolution which had ended her novitiate. "It will
be better for my Italian, to get one in Italy. I shall be safe alone
till I arrive. You see, Reverend Mother has given me a letter to the
Superior in the mother-house, and other letters, too. I shall have
friends in Florence and Rome, and lots of places."

"But it wouldn't look well for you to travel alone," Mrs. Home-Davis
objected.

"Nobody will be looking at me. Nobody will know who I am," Mary argued.
Then, desperately, "Rather than you should find me a companion, Aunt
Sara, I won't go to Italy at all. I----"

She could have chosen no more efficacious threat; though if she had been
allowed to finish her sentence, she would have added, "I'll go back to
Scotland to Lady MacMillan's, or stay in the convent."

Thus the sting would have lost its venom for the Home-Davises, but
Elinor, fearing disaster, cut the sentence short. "Oh, for mercy's sake,
mother, let Mary have her own way," she broke in. "You can see she means
to in the end, so why disturb yourself? Nothing can happen to her."

Elinor's eyes anxiously recalled to her mother a letter that had come
from Doctor Smythe that morning announcing his return at the end of the
week. It was providential that Mary should have proposed going, as it
would have been awkward otherwise to get her out of the house in time;
and Elinor was anxious that she should be taken at her word.

"It's more of appearances than danger that I'm thinking," Mrs.
Home-Davis explained, retiring slowly, face to the enemy, yet with no
real desire to win the battle. "Perhaps if I write Mrs. Larkin in
Florence--a nice, responsible woma