at disappointment, however, to hear that Mrs. Geoffrey
Langford was likely to be detained in London by the state of health of
her aunt, Lady Susan St. Leger, whom she did not like to leave, while no
other of the family was at hand. This was a cruel stroke, but she could
not bear that her husband should miss his yearly holiday, her daughter
lose the pleasure of a fortnight with Henrietta, or Mr. and Mrs.
Langford be deprived of the visit of their favourite son: and she
therefore arranged to go and stay with Lady Susan, while Beatrice and
her father went as usual to Knight Sutton.

Mr. Geoffrey Langford offered to escort his sister-in-law from
Devonshire, but she did not like his holidays to be so wasted. She had
no merely personal apprehensions, and new as railroads were to her,
declared herself perfectly willing and able to manage with no companions
but her daughter and maid, with whom she was to travel to his house
in London, there to be met in a day or two by the two school-boys,
Frederick and his cousin Alexander, and then proceed all together to
Knight Sutton.

Henrietta could scarcely believe that the long-wished-for time was
really come, packing up actually commencing, and that her waking would
find her under a different roof from that which she had never left. She
did not know till now that she had any attachments to the place she
had hitherto believed utterly devoid of all interest; but she found she
could not bid it farewell without sorrow. There was the old boatman with
his rough kindly courtesy, and his droll ways of speaking; there was the
rocky beach where she and her brother had often played on the verge of
the ocean, watching with mysterious awe or sportive delight the ripple
of the advancing waves, the glorious sea itself, the walks, the woods,
streams, and rocks, which she now believed, as mamma and Uncle Geoffrey
had often told her, were more beautiful than anything she was likely to
find in Sussex. Other scenes there were, connected with her grandmother,
which she grieved much at parting with, but she shunned talking over her
regrets, lest she should agitate her mother, whom she watched with great
anxiety.

She was glad that so much business was on her hands, as to leave little
time for dwelling on her feelings, to which she attributed the
calm quietness with which she went through the few trying days that
immediately preceded their departure. Henrietta felt this constant
employment so great a reli