ity, she must go. There had been a
little lull in her cares since they came to Sorrento; the lull was
over. Back to London!--And that meant, back to everything from which
she had hoped to escape. How fondly she had hoped, once her father was
away from the scene of his habits and temptations, he could be saved to
himself and his family; and perhaps even lured back to America where he
would be comparatively safe. Now where was that hope, or any other?
Suddenly Dolly changed her place and sat down close beside Mr. Copley.

"Father, I wish you would take us back to our real old home--back to
Roxbury!"

"Can't do it, my pet."

"But, father, why not? What should keep you in England?"

"Business."

"Now that you are out of the office?"

"Yes. Do you think all business is confined to the consuls' offices? A
few other people have something to do."

Dolly heard no tone of hope-giving in her father's words. She ceased
and sat silent, leaning upon his knee as she was and looking off into
the moonlight. Mrs. Thayer and Mr. St. Leger were carrying on a lively
discourse about people and things unknown to her; Mr. Thayer was
smoking; Mrs. Copley was silent and sorry and cast-down, like herself,
she knew. Dolly's eye went roving through the moonlight as if it were
never going to see moonlight again; and her heart was taking up the old
question, and feeling it too heavy to carry, how should she save her
father from his temptation? Under the pressure Dolly's heart felt very
low; until again those words came and lifted her up,--"Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ?" After that the sweet moonbeams
seemed to be full of those words. I am _not_ alone, thought Dolly, I am
_not_ forgotten; and He does not mean that I should be crushed, or
hurt, by this arrangement of things, which I strove so to hinder. I
will not be one of the "little faith" people. I will just trust the
Lord--my Lord. What I cannot do, He can; and His ways are wonderful and
past finding out.

So she was quieted. And yet as she sat there it came over Dolly's mind,
as things will, quite unbidden; it came over her to think how life
would go on here, in Italy, with Christina, after she was gone. When
the lovely Italian chapter of her own life was closed up and ended,
when she would be far away out of sight of Vesuvius, in the fogs of
London, the sun of Naples would still be shining on the Thayers' villa.
They would go sailing on blue water, or floating over the