LADY VALERIA FIGHTS HER OWN BATTLE.
The two women stood face to face in silence for a few moments. Surprise
made Hilda dumb. She gazed in unconcealed wonderment at the small pale
face framed in white crape, the delicate high-bred features, refined
almost to attenuation, the luminous violet eyes with their long dark
lashes, eyes which alone gave life and colour to the face.
Lady Valeria looked at the girl with so piercing a scrutiny that those
brilliant eyes of hers seemed to burn into the face of her rival--a
scathing look, measuring and appraising that modest girlish beauty,
cheapening those innocent charms in scornful wonder.
And this was the woman for whose sake she, Valeria, had been flung
away like an old glove--this girl-face, with its candid blue eyes and
babified bloom, its broad white forehead ringed round with infantile
curls of golden brown, its delicately pencilled eyebrows, its coral
lips, and small white teeth.
"For people who admire babies the girl is well enough," thought Lady
Valeria.
Yet even her small knowledge of physiognomy taught her that the broad
full forehead and the firmly-moulded lips meant force of character
and firmness of purpose--that this girlish beauty was the beauty of a
good and brave woman--that here there was no reed for her to twist and
rend at her own passionate will, but a nature that was firmer and more
concentrated than her own. Equal forces had met in these two--the force
of passion and the force of principle.
"So you are Miss Heathcote," said the pale lips at last, after that
silent interval, in which Hilda had heard the beating of her own heart;
"you are the Miss Heathcote who is to marry Bothwell Grahame?"
"Yes, Lady Valeria. Bothwell has told me how kind a friend he had in
General Harborough," returned Hilda calmly, trying to feel at her ease
under that searching gaze. "I am very much flattened that you should
come to see me."
"I fear you will feel less flattered when you know the motive of my
visit. No, thanks; I prefer to stand," she said curtly, as Hilda
wheeled a chair towards her guest, and courteously invited her to be
seated. "You will hate me, no doubt, when you know why I am here; and
yet I am come to do you a service--perhaps the greatest service which
one woman can render to another."
"What service, Lady Valeria?" asked Hilda, whose girlish bloom had been
momently fading, and who was now almost as pale as her visitor.
"I am here to save you from a most unhappy union--from a fatal
union--from marriage with a man who loves another woman!"
"That is not true," said Hilda very calmly. "Whoever your informant
may have been, you have been misinformed. I am as firmly convinced of
Bothwell Grahame's love, and of the worth of his character, as I am of
my existence. I would as soon doubt one as doubt the other."
"You are like most girls of your age reared in the country," said
Lady Valeria, with quiet scorn. "You are very ignorant, and you are
very vain. I suppose you imagine that you are the first woman Bothwell
Grahame ever loved--that at seven-and-twenty he brings you a heart
hitherto untouched by beauty; that his senses only awake from a
life-long torpor at sight of your exquisite charms; that nothing less
than your exceptional loveliness could kindle that cold nature into
flame."
"Lady Valeria, if you came here only to insult me--" began Hilda,
moving towards the door.
"I came here to read you a lesson, to save you from a life of misery if
I can; and you shall hear me," said Valeria passionately. "I am here
for your sake, do you understand?--to save you and your lover from an
irreparable folly. He would sacrifice his own happiness and a brilliant
future, from a mistaken sense of honour to you. Now, I want you at
least to know what manner of sacrifice he is going to make for you;
and if you are not made of wood--if you have a woman's heart in your
bosom--you will release him."
"Release him! What do you mean, Lady Valeria? This is sheer madness.
Mr. Grahame sought me of his own accord--chose me deliberately for his
wife, in the face of great difficulties. We are both completely happy
in our love for each other--our faith in each other. There never was a
fairer prospect of a happy domestic life than that which smiles upon
us. There is not a cloud, or the shadow of a cloud, between us."
A footman brought in a little bamboo table, and arranged the
old-fashioned silver tea-tray; and during this brief interruption
hostilities were suspended, and both women composed their faces to
placid neutrality. Lady Valeria declined Hilda's cup of tea, proffered
with a tremulous hand; and directly the man had gone, she coldly
pursued her interrogation.
"Answer me one question, Miss Heathcote. Do you believe yourself Mr.
Grahame's first love?"
"No," faltered Hilda. "I know that there was some one else--that there
was an entanglement from which Mr. Grahame released himself, honourably
and completely, before I accepted him as my future husband. I made that
condition when first he asked me to be his wife. I waited until he
could give me his assurance upon this point before I consented to marry
him."
"O, then you did know that there was some one?" exclaimed Lady Valeria,
with crushing scorn. "You did know that there was an entanglement--or,
in plain words, you knew that you were stealing another woman's lover."
"Lady Valeria, you have no right to say such a thing."
"I have every right. Yes, you knew well enough what you were doing,
in spite of your provincial bringing up. Every woman is wise in these
matters. An entanglement, you say. Do you know, girl, that this
entanglement, of which you speak so flippantly, was a passionate
all-absorbing love--a love that had lasted three years, that had braved
all consequences, that had laughed at danger--a love that burns in
every line of these letters? Read them; read them, girl, and see what
your 'entanglement' means."
She had opened her reticule, and had taken out a packet of letters
while she was speaking. She flung the packet on to a table near Hilda.
"Read them, Miss Heathcote. I suppose you know Mr. Grahame's
handwriting. I suppose he has written to you."
"I can see that they are in Bothwell's hand," said Hilda, looking down
at the bundle of letters, as if they had been a nest of scorpions; "but
I decline to read letters that are not addressed to me."
"You are afraid to read them?"
"I will take it upon trust that they are love-letters. May I ask if
they were written to you--General Harborough's wife?"
The calm and measured accents, the steady gaze of those honest eyes,
the resolute attitude, the small well-balanced head proudly erect,
the nervous hands clasped firmly on the back of a chair by which
the girl was standing, surprised Lady Valeria, and with a far from
pleasant surprise. She had expected Hilda to be more easily crushed.
She had expected to see a love-sick girl sobbing at her feet, ready to
surrender her sweetheart at the first attack. And instead of girlish
weakness, she found a woman prepared to do battle for her love.
"The letters are addressed to me. I should much like you to read them,
in order that you may understand the nature of Bothwell Grahame's
'entanglement'."
"I decline to read them. It is quite enough for me to know that he was
in love with a married woman, and that she encouraged his love--she,
the wife of a good and brave old man--she who, by the right of her
noble birth, should have been prouder, truer, purer than women of
meaner race. She stooped so low! I am sorry that you came here, Lady
Valeria. I am sorry that we have ever met--very sorry that you have
told me your secret."
"It is everybody's secret by this time. A woman in my position is
surrounded by lynx-eyed friends, who read her inmost thoughts.
Everybody knows that Bothwell Grahame loved me, and that I returned his
love. To you this seems terrible, no doubt. Yet I can tell you that I
was a true wife to my husband, as the world estimates truth, and that
he died honouring me. You, with your provincial inexperience and your
narrow mind, cannot imagine a love which, although unconquered, could
remain pure--passionate, intense, devoted, but unstained by sin. Such
a love I cherished for Bothwell Grahame, and he for me. We had promised
each other that, whenever my release came--and in the course of nature
it was not likely to be long deferred--our lives should be linked, our
love should be blest. I lived on that hope, and to Bothwell, as those
letters would tell you, that hope was no less dear than to me. Honour,
right feeling, honesty, were all involved in the promise which bound
Bothwell Grahame to me; and I never for an instant doubted that he
would keep that promise, never doubted that he was mine till death.
But in an evil hour he met you. He was under a cloud. He was maddened
by the idea that his neighbours thought the most horrible things of
him. You interposed with your girlish sympathy, your sentimental
prettiness. You consoled, you encouraged him in his dark hour; and that
impulsive nature was moved to a step which he has repented ever since.
He committed himself by an avowal which left him no possibility of
retreat; and to be true to you he has broken the most sacred promise
that man ever made to woman."
"You released him from that promise, Lady Valeria."
"Never. Some hasty words passed between us on one occasion, and we
parted in anger. But there was no question of a release from his solemn
engagement to me."
"He told me that the lady he had once loved had released him," said
Hilda, terribly crestfallen.
She could not believe that Lady Valeria Harborough would tell her a
deliberate lie. She was convinced, in spite of herself. Bothwell had
deceived her.
"I beg you to read those letters," urged Valeria. "If you do not read
them, you may think just a little worse of me than I deserve. I do not
pretend to be a good woman; but I want you to know that my attachment
to Bothwell Grahame never degenerated into a low intrigue. You may hear
the vilest things said of me, perhaps, by and by, when it is known that
Mr. Grahame is not going to marry me."
Hilda looked at the letters. She knew that the reading of them
would wring her heart; and yet the temptation was too strong to be
steadfastly resisted.
Slowly, reluctantly, almost as if under the influence of a mesmerist,
Hilda's hand was extended to the packet of letters. She took it up, and
looked at it for a few moments, still hesitating.
The letters were folded lengthwise, without their envelopes. Bothwell's
bold large hand was easy enough to read, even at a glance. Without
untying the packet Hilda could see the nature of those letters. "My
dearest love," "My life," "My ever beloved." Such words as those
scattered on the folded pages told the character of the correspondence.
She had known from the first, from his own lips, that he had cared for
another woman, that he had been in some manner bound to that other
woman--his future life so compromised that he must needs win his
release from that tie before he could offer himself honourably to his
new love. She had known this, and yet the sight of those impassioned
phrases in the hand of her betrothed tortured her almost to madness.
She flung the packet from her, flung it at her rival's feet, as if it
had been some loathsome reptile that had fastened on her hand.
"It is shameful, abominable!" she cried. "Such words as those written
to another man's wife! I will read no more--not a line--not a syllable."
"But you shall read, or you shall hear," said Valeria, taking up the
packet. "You shall know what kind of vows this man made to me, this man
whom you are going to marry."
She drew out a letter haphazard, and thrust it into Hilda's
hand--forced her to read by sheer strength of will, watching her with
flashing eyes all the while.
Hilda read words of such passionate vehemence that it was difficult to
believe that transient feelings could have inspired them--words which
told of rapturous delight in a reciprocal love, and fondest hope of
future union; words that made light of all things in earth and heaven
as weighed against that all-absorbing love. She read of that scheme of
the future in which the ultimate marriage of the lovers was counted on
as a certainty.
And it was for her sake he had abandoned this old dream--this plan
of a life so long cherished. It was for her, an obscure, country-bred
girl, who could bring him neither fame nor fortune, that he had
surrendered all hope of calling this brilliant high-born woman his wife.
And now the hour had come when he might have claimed her, when, his
years of servitude being over, he had but to wait the brief span
society demands, before he faced the world with this woman by his
side, the sharer of her social status, her ample means. Surely this
would have been a happy fate for him, if there were any truth in these
words of his, words which seemed to scorch Hilda's brain as she stood,
silent, motionless, poring over them.
"You see," said Lady Valeria, after a long silence, "that once at least
your lover loved me."
"I thought that once in such things meant for ever," answered Hilda,
with a quiet sadness, as of one who speaks of the dead. "Yet the man
who wrote this letter has talked and written of his love for me as
tenderly, if not as passionately, as he has written here. Yes, I knew
that he had cared for some one else, but not like this. I did not
think such a love as this could come twice in a lifetime."
"You are wiser than I expected to find you," said Valeria, with languid
insolence. "No, child, men do not love like that twice in a lifetime.
I had Bothwell Grahame's heart at its best--his constancy, his
devotion--and he would have been true to me till the end of his life
had it not been for that business of the murder, which made men look
askance at him, and your childish pity, which touched his heart when it
was sorest. He was caught in the toils of his own affectionate nature.
His grateful heart, which always melted at the least kindness, betrayed
him. And because he was sympathetic and grateful you thought he loved
you; and now you stand between him and his first love. You are the only
barrier to a marriage which would make Bothwell Grahame a rich man, and
me the happiest of women."
"If you had heard him talk of our future, if you had seen him planning
our home, you would hardly doubt that he meant to be happy with me,
Lady Valeria," said Hilda.
"My child, I have seen your future home; I have heard what kind of
a life Bothwell Grahame is to lead as your husband. He is to be a
schoolmaster, cramming dull boys for impossible examinations; grinding
mathematics and theoretical engineering all day long and every day,
till his brain is weary; going over the same ground again and again
like a horse in a mill. He is to be a nobody, a plodding bread-winner,
living year after year in a God-forsaken village, far away from the
great arena of life; ground down by the fathers and patronised by the
mothers of his pupils. He is to cherish no higher ambition than to be
able to pay the butcher and the baker, and to get himself a new coat
before the old one is threadbare. _That_ is the life to which your
generous love would condemn him."
"We are not going to be quite such paupers as you imagine, Lady
Valeria. I have a small income of my own, which will at least pay the
baker; and I do not think Bothwell's rich cousin would see him in want
of a coat."
"My dear Miss Heathcote, it is only a question of degree. Granted that
Mr. Grahame is sure of his breakfast and dinner, his existence as
a private tutor will be none the less a life of exile from all that
makes life worth living--from the world of art and letters, from the
strife and the glory of politics, from the great world of distinguished
men and women. As my husband he would have the ball at his feet. His
fortune would be large enough to command an opening in any career he
might choose for himself, his connections on my side of the house would
be powerful enough to help him, and his talents would undoubtedly bring
him to the front. In the House his career would be assured. With his
knowledge of India and Indian war tactics, he would inevitably make his
mark. There are hardly three men in the House of Commons who have any
real knowledge of that vast Eastern world for which English politicians
legislate. You see I have dreamed for him, thought for him. All my
ambition is for him, and not for myself."
"I am willing to believe that you love him, Lady Valeria," said
Hilda, with frigid distinctness, looking her rival full in the face,
"since nothing but the blindest love could induce any woman in
your position to lower yourself as you have done--first in India as
General Harborough's wife, and secondly to-day as General Harborough's
widow--when you come to me and ask me to give up my betrothed husband,
the man to whom I am to be married next Tuesday; for I suppose that is
the gist of all you have said to me."
"I ask nothing from you, Miss Heathcote. I know the narrow view which
most girls of your age, brought up as you have been, take of life and
its obligations. I do not expect large-minded ideas from a young lady
with your surroundings." This was said with infinite scorn of Hilda's
rustic rearing. "But I think it well that you should know how much
Bothwell Grahame surrenders for the privilege of having you for a wife.
Of course it is quite possible that the recompense may be worth the
sacrifice. It is for you to judge of that. I wish you good-day."
Hilda bowed and rang the bell, without a word. She did not accompany
her visitor to the drawing-room door, but stood in a stony silence
looking out at the window in front of her, with fixed eyes.
It was only when the outer door had closed on Lady Valeria that the
girl flung herself on the nearest sofa and abandoned herself to her
grief.
Alas, this entanglement of the past had been something more than a
garland of roses. It had been a chain from which her lover had tried to
release himself, but whose iron links yet hung about him.
All the happiness was gone out of her life, all the sweet tranquillity
which had been the holiest charm in her love for Bothwell, the deep
faith in her beloved, the assurance of his trustworthiness, his
unalloyed love for her. How could she ever again believe in that love,
after she had heard the history of his passion for another, after she
had read of that wild infatuation in his own hand, after she had seen
the woman he had thus loved and thus addressed--a woman to win and hold
the love of men, a woman whose face had that subtle charm of supreme
refinement and distinction which is far above the peach-bloom tints and
perfect lines of stereotyped beauty? In Valeria the broken-hearted girl
acknowledged a siren before whose fascinations the wisest man might
be as a fool. She compared herself with her rival. She walked across
the room and stood before the long console-glass, contemplating her
own image, half-scornfully, half-sorrowfully. The pale tear-blotted
face appeared at its worst, robbed of the freshness that constituted
half its beauty. The slight and girlish figure looked insignificant as
compared with Valeria's statelier bearing.
The girl turned herself about, and looked at herself at every angle, as
if she had been trying on a gown at her milliner's.
"What a dowdy I am!" she said to herself. "Just the very pattern for
a schoolmaster's wife. I doubt if Lady Valeria is more than an inch
taller; and yet she looks a queen. It is the way she carries her head,
I suppose, and the way she walks, like a woman accustomed to command.
Yes, a man might well be proud of such a wife, and of the position
such a wife could give him. Bothwell in Parliament. Bothwell a great
authority on Indian affairs. How strange it sounds! But I know how
clever he is, how well he can talk upon any subject. It would be a
splendid career for him. And for my sake he is to forego all that, and
to drudge as a tutor in a Cornish village. Yes, I suppose it would be
a dreary life for such a man--though it seemed so full of brightness
when we two talked about it last week. For my sake. No, Bothwell," she
said to herself resolutely, striking her clenched hand upon the marble
table. "No, Bothwell, not for my sake! You shall not surrender fame and
fortune for my sake!"
And then, seating herself on the old-fashioned window-seat, with
clasped hands lying in her lap, and steadfast eyes brooding on the
ground; in an attitude of deepest thought, she retraced the history of
Bothwell's courtship. She asked herself if she had verily been, as Lady
Valeria had insinuated, herself half the wooer. She remembered how, in
the beginning of their acquaintance, she had admired Dora Wyllard's
cousin--how his riding, his singing, his conversation had alike seemed
perfection. How she had contrasted him, to his wondrous advantage,
with the country squires around and about. It was just possible that
in her girlish inexperience she had betrayed her admiration, had
flattered Bothwell into the idea that he liked her. And then, when
the hour of trouble came, it was true that she had made no effort to
hide her feelings; she had given Bothwell her sympathy almost unasked;
she had, perhaps, lured him into declaring himself as her lover, when
the feeling which inspired him was but the impulse of the moment, a
transient emotion, born of gratitude.
She could understand how, in his self-contempt, his wounded honour, he
had believed that his love for Valeria was a thing of the past, and had
been glad to release himself from the ignoble bondage. But now that
Valeria was free, his first love, fondly attached to him, valuing her
fortune and position only as a means for his advancement, who could
doubt that the old love would revive in his breast with all the old
fervour; that his heart would go back to his first beloved, as a bird
returns to its nest?
And was his whole life to be sacrificed because of this one mistaken
impulse? No, the wrong was not yet irreparable. The marriage planned
for next Tuesday need never take place.
Hilda began deliberately to scheme out the manner in which she should
set her lover free. If the thing was to be done, it must be done
bravely and thoroughly--not by halves. There must be no half-hearted
action, no wavering, no pretence of surrender offered in the hope that
Bothwell would refuse to accept his liberty. No; she must make the
sacrifice as full and as effectual as that of Jephthah's daughter. She
gave her life to save her father's honour. She (Hilda) could give her
happiness, her fair future, the sweet ideal she had dreamed of, the
life which to every good woman seems of all lives most perfect, an
existence spent in tranquil seclusion with the husband of her choice.
After long brooding, deepest thought interrupted ever and anon by a
burst of passionate weeping, tears which would not be restrained, Hilda
had made her plan. She would go away, quite away, where Bothwell could
not follow her. She would write him a letter which would leave him free
to return to his old allegiance, while she herself would disappear,
drop quietly out of the circle in which she was known, and remain
hidden from all her friends for the next few months, perhaps for a
year: at any rate until the joy-bells had rung for Bothwell's marriage
with his old love. Alas, those joy-bells! She had imagined them ringing
for her own wedding; she had heard their sweet music in her dreams.
Where should she go? What should she do with herself during the time
of hiding? That was the question; and it was a difficult one for this
inexperienced girl to answer. She had travelled so little, that all
the wide world outside her own home was no more familiar to her than
a chapter of geography. She knew the names of mountains and rivers,
she had made her dream-pictures of beautiful places and scenes in
far-away lands; but of railways and steamers, of the mode and manner of
journeying from one place to another, of hotels and custom-houses, and
the exchange of money, she knew hardly anything.
"I must go very far away, to some place where he would not think of
following me, where he could never find me," she said to herself,
supposing that it would be a point of honour with Bothwell to follow
her, to keep his plighted troth, if it were possible.
She wanted to set him free, to make it easy for him to go back to his
old love. She told herself that Lady Valeria had spoken the truth, and
that it was not possible for him to have forgotten that old love.
When he had married Valeria, she, Hilda, would be free to come back to
her home, to take up the thread of her broken life and follow it on to
the dreary end. What joy could she have in her life, having lost him?
Only the joy of knowing that she had loved him better than herself,
cared more for his happiness than her own--the joy of woman's martyrdom.
After long deliberation, after having thought of a trip to Canada or
a voyage to Australia, after having meditated upon various possible
and impossible journeys, she decided upon a very commonplace course of
proceeding. She had often heard it remarked of a levanting criminal
that if he had stayed in London or any populous city, he would in all
probability have escaped his pursuers; he would have been lost in the
press of humanity, like a bubble in a running stream; whereas the man
who goes to America is almost inevitably traced and trapped.
She would not go to London, a city she hated, and where she might at
any moment run against her Cornish friends, all of whom paid occasional
visits to the metropolis. She would go to Paris, where she would be
lost among strangers; where she could live quietly in some obscure
quarter, improving herself as a singer and a pianiste, until her time
of probation was over, and the announcement of Bothwell's marriage told
her that her sacrifice had been consummated. She would so plan her
life that her brother could know that she was well and well cared for;
but even he should not know the place of her residence, lest he should
betray her secret to Bothwell.
This idea of Paris was partly traceable to an old influence. Until a
year ago she had taken lessons from a bright little Frenchwoman who had
taught her music and singing, and who had helped her incidentally with
her French. The lessons had been going on for three years, when Hilda
was pronounced to have finished her musical education, or at least
to have learnt as much as Mademoiselle Duprez could teach her, and in
those three years the little Frenchwoman had been a weekly visitor at
The Spaniards, coming all the way from Plymouth to give her lesson, and
being driven back to the station by her pupil, after a cheery luncheon,
which the little woman thoroughly enjoyed.
Mademoiselle Duprez claimed kindred with the famous French tenor of
that name, and had herself been a small celebrity in her way. She
had sung at the Opera House in the Rue Lepelletier, in the days when
Falcon was Diva, and Halevy's Juive was the success of the hour. Then
came a fatal fever, caught at Nice, where she had gone to fulfil an
autumnal engagement. Louise Duprez lost the voice which had been
her only fortune. Happily, though the voice was gone, the exquisite
method learned from Garcia, and ripened at the feet of Rossini, still
remained; and by her excellence as a teacher of singing and piano,
Mademoiselle Duprez had contrived to make a comfortable living, first
in Paris, and afterwards at Plymouth, whither she had come at the
suggestion of Edward Heathcote, who had made her acquaintance at the
house of one of his Parisian friends, and who had recommended her
to try a residence in Devonshire as a cure for her delicate chest,
promising at the same time to do all in his power to help her in
finding pupils at Plymouth, where he was at that time Town Clerk.
Mademoiselle Duprez had followed Mr. Heathcote's advice, and had
not waited long before she found herself fairly established in the
Devonshire sea-port. Hilda had been her first pupil, and Hilda she
loved almost as a maiden aunt loves the prettiest and most amiable
of her nieces. It was Hilda she quoted to all her other pupils. "You
should hear a dear young friend of mine, Miss Heathcote of Bodmin, sing
that song," she would say; and an eloquent shrug of her shoulders and
elevation of her eyebrows would express how wide the difference between
Miss Heathcote's perfection and the shortcoming of the performer then
in hand.
Hilda was very fond of the lively little Parisienne: loved to hear her
talk, and to learn of her; hung upon her words as she expounded the
delicacies of her native language. Hilda had petted and made much of
the little woman whenever she came to The Spaniards; had never spent a
day in Plymouth without paying her old mistress a visit. And now in her
sorrow and difficulty it was of Louise Duprez she thought, as the one
friend whom she could trust with her secret, and who would be able to
help her.
Hilda went to her own room before Fräulein Meyerstein returned from
her afternoon walk with the twins. Those well-brought-up infants were
ruthlessly sent from their playroom, their rocking-horse, and their
doll's house, an hour after their early dinner, and were taken for
afternoon drill by the Fräulein. Needless to say that they detested the
formal trudge along dusty lanes, and abhorred the beauties of Nature
encountered on the way; but their health no doubt profited by this
severe regimen.
Hilda shut herself in her own rooms for the rest of the evening; with
the usual plea of a headache. But she was up before daybreak next
morning, and by six o'clock she had packed a small portmanteau and a
Gladstone bag with her own hands, and carried them down surreptitiously
to the stable-yard, where she gave them to an underling, with
directions to put them in the pony-cart, and take them to Bodmin Road
station in time for the eight-o'clock train. She herself intended to
walk to the station, as her appearance on foot would be less likely to
attract attention than in the pony-cart with the luggage.
So in the dewy morning, alone and unattended, with ashen cheeks and
eyelids swollen by long weeping, Hilda Heathcote crept out of her
brother's house, and walked across the hills, trusting to the keen
breath of the autumn wind to obliterate the traces of a night of
anguish before she arrived at the station.
She had written a long letter to Bothwell. This she carried with her,
to post in Plymouth; and she had left letters for her brother and for
the Fräulein. No one need be made uneasy at her disappearance.