iked to go ashore in the Swiss
family's eight tubs!

The thorough change, after all the sorrow, seemed delicious to her! I
heard her and Bertram laughing down below, and wondered if they got the
length of settling what dogs they would take out!

And Fulk! He really had almost persuaded himself that Emily would go
with us; or at the very worst, would wait till he had achieved
prosperity and could come home and fetch her.

Mrs. Deerhurst had declared that waiting for the decision was so bad
for her nerves, that she must take her to Paris; and actually our dear
old stupid fellow had not perceived what that meant, for the woman had
let him part tenderly with Emily in London, with promises of writing,
&c., the instant the case was decided. It passed his powers to suppose
she could expose her daughter's heart to such a wreck. So he held up,
cheerful and hopeful, thinking what a treasure of constancy he had!
And when they had built their castle in New Zealand, they sent up
Jaquey to call me to share it with them. Baby was asleep, and I went
down; but when I heard the plan--it was cross to be so unsympathizing,
but I did feel hurt and angry at their forgetting him; and I said, "I
shall never leave Alured."

"Ursula! you could not stay by yourself," said Jaquey. And Bertram,
who had hardly ever seen him, and could not care for him said it was
nonsense, and even if there were a chance of the child living, I could
not be left behind.

I was wrought up, and broke out that he would and should live, and that
I would come as a stranger, a nursery governess, and watch over him,
and never abandon him to Hester.

"Never fear, Ursula," said Fulk, "if he lives, he will be in safe
hands."

"Safe hands! What are safe hands for a child like that! Hester's, who
only wishes him out of her way?"

"For shame!" the others said, and I answered that, of course, I did not
think Hester meant ill by him, but that, where the doctors had said
only love and care could save him--no care was safe where he was not
loved; and I cried very, very bitterly, more than I had done even for
my father, or for anything else before; and I fell into a storm of
passion, at the cruelty of leaving the poor little thing, whom his
dying mother had trusted to me, and declared I would never, never do it.

I was right in the main, it seems to me, but unjust and naughty in the
way I did it; and when Fulk, with some hesitation, began to talk of my
not being ask