d so much, that the
doctor declared the sea-air too keen for her, and that she had better
be sent, during the warm season, to a quiet inland place in the
neighbourhood, the air of which he thought particularly suited to her
constitution. But of course Amy could not be sent there alone, and
none of the rest would have been willing to give up their proposed
visit to the seaside, except Mrs. Brooke, who could not be spared from
her duties to her other daughters.

Lucy therefore seemed the one who should accompany Amy, and she
herself felt that it was an occasion on which she might make some
return for the kindness she had met with in her uncle's family. So
her visit to Ashleigh was given up, and Amy's delight at finding that
she was to accompany her to Oakvale, was enough to make her forget any
disappointment which her decision had involved. They were to be
received into the family of a friend of the doctor's, a widow lady,
who frequently received invalids as boarders, with whom little Amy
would receive all the care and comfort she needed.

A few days before their departure, Lucy at last received, through
Bessie Ford, the address of Nelly Connor's mistress. Stella, who,
notwithstanding her raillery at Lucy's _protegee_, had a sort of
latent interest in Nelly, from her association with her pleasant visit
to Ashleigh, accompanied her cousin in her long walk to look for the
house. On reaching it at last, tired and hot, the door was opened, not
by Nelly, as Lucy had hoped, but by an unprepossessing-looking woman,
whose hard face grew more rigid when informed what was the object of
her visit.

"You needn't come here to look for her," she replied grimly; "she's
left this some time since, and I don't never want to set eyes on her
again."

"Is she not here, then? Where is she gone?"

"I don't know," was the reply, "and I don't want to know. A girl that
could behave as she done to one who took such pains with her, and kept
her so long, ain't a girl to my taste. I wash my hands of her."

"But perhaps you could tell us what place she went to from you?"
persisted Lucy. "I am a friend of hers, and would like to find her
out."

"Well, she is no credit to her friends," said the woman, rather
pleased at being able to give her a bad character where it might be of
some consequence. "And as for the vagrant character she went off with,
I'd be very sorry to have any acquaintance with him."

Finding the uselessness of prosecuting her