take her for a thorough change. In truth, he was
beginning, he said, to doubt whether she could live in this
out-of-the-world place much longer. She liked it--oh yes, she liked
it--but he feared the solitude was telling upon her nerves. Mrs. Abbott
admitted that there might be something in this.

'Should you return to London?' she asked.

Whereupon Harvey stared before him, and looked troubled, and could only
answer that he did not know.

When, two days after, the promised letter came from Mrs. Abbott, Harvey
took it up to the invalid's room, and sat by her whilst she read it.

'She writes so nicely,' said Alma, who never in her life had showed
such sweetness of disposition as during this convalescence. 'Read it
for yourself, Harvey. Isn't it a nice letter? I feel so sorry we
haven't known each other before. But we're going to be friends now.'

'I'm sure I'm very glad.'

'Nothing from Mamma? I almost think I could write to her to-day. Of
course, she'll fall into a dreadful state of mind, and want to know why
she wasn't sent for, and lament over--everything. But it's no use her
coming here now. When we go away we must manage to see her.'

'Yes. Have you thought where you would like to go?'

'Not yet. There's plenty of time.'

Not a word had passed between them with reference to the perilous
drive. Alma spoke as if her illness were merely natural, due to nothing
in particular; but her husband fancied that she wished to atone, by
sweet and affectionate behaviour, for that unwonted ill-usage of him.
He saw, too, beyond doubt, that the illness seemed to her a blessing;
its result, which some women would have wept over, brought joy into her
eyes. This, in so far as it was unnatural, caused him some disturbance;
on the other hand, he was quite unable to take a regretful view of what
had happened, and why should he charge upon Alma as a moral fault that
which he easily condoned in himself?

A few days more and the convalescent was allowed to leave her room. As
if to welcome her, there arrived that morning a letter from Melbourne,
with news that Sibyl and her husband would sail for England in a
fortnight's time after the date of writing, by the Orient Line steamer
_Lusitania_.

'You know what you suggested?' cried Alma delightedly. 'Shall we go?'

'What--to Naples? We should have to be off immediately. If they come by
the next ship after the one that brought this letter, they are now only
a fortnight from the end