metimes as if Death cannot leave a
certain family alone, but comes back to it again and again.

"Evelyn is broken-hearted," her husband wrote, "and if she stays in this
horrible India I believe I shall lose her too. I am going to exchange if
I can to a home regiment, or I shall leave the army. I do not care what
we do as long as I get her away. In the midst of it all she keeps
thinking of how you will feel it. I believe a good cry with you is the
one thing that might comfort her."

Henrietta took this letter to her father, and implored him to let her go
out to India at once. But this Mr. Symons, though kind and sympathetic
and truly sorry for Evelyn, could not bring himself to allow. He was
getting to the age when he shrank from violent upheavals. Herbert said
they were leaving India. By the time she arrived they would probably be
gone, and then what a wild goose chase it would be. Then, of course, she
could not go alone, and who was to go with her? Her brothers could not
spare the time, and he did not feel up to going, and she must have a man
with her. Edward? No, certainly not. Since his speculations, Edward was
in bad odour. No, it would be much better to write a kind letter--he
would write too--and drop this really foolish scheme, which would, among
other things, be very costly, more costly than he felt prepared to face
just then.

She said she would go alone.

"Then you would go entirely without my sanction. It is a perfectly
impossible thing for a young lady to contemplate. You have never even
been on the Continent, and you think of travelling to India unattended."

She had never acted in opposition to her parents, though she had often
been domineering to her father in small matters, when he had not
resisted. She was always weak, she could only fight when the other side
would not fight back. She said, "Oh, father, I must go," and when he
said, "Nonsense, I couldn't think of it," she collapsed, partly from
cowardice, partly from duty, though her father was not in the least
strong-willed either, and with a little serious resistance would have
been made to yield. She felt bitterly the reproach in Evelyn's letter,
"If only you could have come."

She did not feel as wildly wretched as fifteen years ago, because now in
middle age what she passed through at the moment was not of the same
desperate importance; but then she had a small corner of hope hidden
away that perhaps something might happen, whereas now she re