on; it seemed to Leila absolutely
unintelligible that Mrs. Lidcote should not stay on with them till their
own fate was fixed, and Wilbour echoed her astonishment.

"Why shouldn't you, as Leila says, wait here till we can all pack up and
go together?"

Mrs. Lidcote smiled her gratitude with her refusal. "After all, it's not
yet sure that you'll be packing up."

"Oh, you ought to have seen Wilbour with Mrs. Boulger," Leila triumphed.

"No, you ought to have seen Leila with her," Leila's husband exulted.

Miss Suffern enthusiastically appended: "I _do_ think inviting Harriet
Fresbie was a stroke of genius!"

"Oh, we'll be with you soon," Leila laughed. "So soon that it's really
foolish to separate."

But Mrs. Lidcote held out with the quiet firmness which her daughter
knew it was useless to oppose. After her long months in India, it was
really imperative, she declared, that she should get back to Florence
and see what was happening to her little place there; and she had been
so comfortable on the _Utopia_ that she had a fancy to return by the
same ship. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to acquiesce in her
decision and keep her with them till the afternoon before the day of
the _Utopia's_ sailing. This arrangement fitted in with certain projects
which, during her two days' seclusion, Mrs. Lidcote had silently
matured. It had become to her of the first importance to get away as
soon as she could, and the little place in Florence, which held her
past in every fold of its curtains and between every page of its books,
seemed now to her the one spot where that past would be endurable to
look upon.

She was not unhappy during the intervening days. The sight of Leila's
well-being, the sense of Leila's tenderness, were, after all, what she
had come for; and of these she had had full measure. Leila had never
been happier or more tender; and the contemplation of her bliss, and the
enjoyment of her affection, were an absorbing occupation for her mother.
But they were also a sharp strain on certain overtightened chords, and
Mrs. Lidcote, when at last she found herself alone in the New York hotel
to which she had returned the night before embarking, had the feeling
that she had just escaped with her life from the clutch of a giant hand.

She had refused to let her daughter come to town with her; she had even
rejected Susy Suffern's company. She wanted no viaticum but that of her
own thoughts; and she let these come to