ivate talk between the sisters,
for Frances and Eugene went back to Market Square Place that same
afternoon with their aunt. But even when, a week later, Jacinth herself
rejoined them there a day or two before the reopening of Ivy Lodge
school, there was no mention of the Harpers, and no allusion to what had
passed at luncheon the day of Miss Mildmay's visit to Robin Redbreast.

'Can it be that Lady Myrtle is really going to be kind to them, and that
she told Jacinth not to be vexed with me?' thought sanguine little
Frances. She would have felt less hopeful had she known that not one
word had passed between her sister and the old lady on the subject of
her unknown relations. And Jacinth had simply made up her mind to think
no more about them; her conscience now being, or so at least she told
herself, completely at rest--the matter entirely out of her hands.

It was the easier to carry out this resolution that Bessie and
Margaret's places were vacant, though no one seemed very clearly to
understand why they had not returned, and the Misses Scarlett expressed
the heartiest regret that they had not done so. Honor Falmouth too had
left, but this had been known by anticipation to her companions for
some time. And in the little world of a school, as in the bigger world
outside, it is not for long that the circles in the waters of daily life
mark the spot of any disappearance; it has to be so, and does not
necessarily imply either heartlessness or caprice. We are limited as to
our powers in all directions--the more marvellous that somewhere,
invisible, unsuspected, our innermost self lives on. And far down, below
the surface restlessness and change, may we not hope that we shall find
again the fibres of loving friendships and pure affections whose roots
were deep and true, though at times it may seem that like other precious
and beautiful things they were but as a dream?

Frances missed her friends sadly, the more so that not knowing their
exact address, and half afraid also to do such a thing on her own
responsibility, she could not write to them. But nothing depressed
Frances now for very long or very deeply. She had found a panacea. All
would be right soon, 'when mamma comes home.'

CHAPTER XIII.

MAMMA.

At Thetford the weeks till Easter--it came in the middle of April that
year--passed quickly. It is true that every morning, when Frances scored
out one of the long row of little lines she had made to represen