have gone to Australia
because your father's got a deanery there."

"Have they left me here, mad and by myself?" asked Milly; "have I no one
to look after me, no one to give me a home?"

"I suppose Lady Thomson or the Fletchers would," returned Tims, "but you
haven't wanted one. You've been quite happy at Ascham. Do try and
remember. Can't you remember getting your First in Mods. and how you've
been working to get one in Greats? Your brain's been right enough until
to-day, old girl, and it will be again. I expect it's a case of collapse
of memory from overwork. Things will come back to you soon and I'll help
you all I can. Do try and recollect me--Tims." There was an unmistakable
choke in Tims's voice. "We have been such chums. The others are all
pretty nasty to me sometimes--they seem to think I'm a grinning, wooden
Aunt Sally, stuck up for them to shy jokes at. But you've never once
been nasty to me, M., and there's precious few things I wouldn't do to
help you. So don't go talking to me as though there weren't any one in
the world who cared a brass farthing about you."

"I'm sure I'm most thankful to find I have got some one here who cares
about me," returned Milly, meekly, passing her hand across her eyes for
lack of a handkerchief. "You see, it's dreadful for me to be like this.
I seem to know what things are, and yet I don't know. A little while ago
it seemed to me I was just going to remember something--something
different from what you've told me. But now it's all gone again. Oh,
please give me a handkerchief!"

Tims opened one of Milly's tidy drawers and sought for a handkerchief.
When she had found it, Milly was standing before the high
chimney-piece, over which hung a long, low mirror about a foot wide and
divided into three parts by miniature pilasters of tarnished gilt. The
mirror, too, was tarnished here and there, but it had been a good glass
and showed undistorted the blue Delft jars on the mantel-shelf, glimpses
of flickering firelight in the room, amber hair and the tear-bedewed
roses of a flushed young face. Suddenly Milly thrust the jars aside,
seized the candle from the table, and, holding it near her face, looked
intently, anxiously in the glass. The anxiety vanished in a moment, but
not the intentness. She went on looking. Tims had always perceived
Milly's beauty--which had an odd way of slipping through the world
unobserved--but had never seen her look so lovely as now, her eyes wide
and bri