and kindly as a daughter, and said all that was
proper; but she actually forestalled us by desiring her son not to come
out to her, for she thought it much better for Viola not to have
painful recollections revived, and Viola herself wrote in a way that
disappointed us--loving indeed, but with a strain of something between
lightness and bitterness, and absolutely congratulating her brother
that there was no one on my side to bring up bygones against him. One
half of her letter was a mere guide-book to the Roman antiquities, and
was broken off short for some carnival gaiety. Lord Erymanth clearly
liked his letters as little as we did. In the abstract, in spite of
the first cousinship, I am afraid he would rather have given Viola to
Pigou St. Glear than to Harold Alison, but he had thought better of his
niece than to think she could forget such a man so soon.

However, the day came. Dora slept with me, and that last night when I
came to bed, I found the true self had made a reassertion in one of
those frightful fits of dumb hysteria. Half the night Colman and I
were attending to her, but still she never opened to me, more than by
clinging frantically round my neck in the intervals. She fell asleep
at last, and slept till we actually pulled her out of bed to be dressed
for the wedding; but we agreed that we could not expose our uncle (who
was to escort her to Northchester station) to being left alone with her
in one of these attacks, and, as our programme had never been quite
fixed, we altered it so far as to pass through Northchester and see her
safe into Baby Horsman's hands.

She was altogether herself by day, gave no sign of emotion, and was as
merry as possible throughout the journey, calling out to Dermot airily
from the platform that she should send him a present of sour krout from
Baden. Poor child, it was five years before we saw her again!

We had scarcely had time to settle in at Killy Marey before Lady Diana
implored us to meet her in London, without explaining what was the
matter. When we came to Lord Erymanth's house, we were met by Viola,
very thin, but with a bright red colour on her usually pale cheeks, and
a strange gleaming light in her eyes, making them larger than ever; and
oh, how she did talk! Chatter, chatter, about all they had seen or
done, and all the absurdities of the people they had met; mimicking
them and making fun, and all the time her mother became paler and
graver, looking as