"I was not in earnest, Philip. I know she is one of your big family, and for that reason alone, I shall always take an interest in her. She has much to learn, but there is, if I am not mistaken, a capability and individuality which will never rest until much is learnt."
"May the Great Teacher take her in hand," said the Colonel musingly.
Miss Lorraine took her friend's advice. She wrote to Jean regularly and continuously through all the summer months. Once she had a short, hurried letter.
And then in October, Jean came back to her. She was sitting at her tea on a wet and stormy afternoon. Doughty was by her side. She had been out to see a sick woman in her district, and had come home tired and a little depressed. Leaning back in her chair, she was meditating upon the suffering in some lives and the impossibility to relieve it, when the door burst open, and Jean almost threw herself into her arms.
"Will you have me, Miss Lorraine? I am sick of everything, and I've come back to you!"
Miss Lorraine kissed her affectionately.
"I knew I had not lost you," she said, and then she made her sit down, and would hear nothing, till she had had some tea and had lost some of the tired lines in her young face.
She was looking very pretty, and had a certain indescribable French daintiness about her that had evidently been acquired in Paris.
"I am dying to tell you everything!" she said. "Don't have lights, let me tell you in the dusk."
So, when the maid had removed the tea things, Jean sat down on the rug and rested her head against Hiss Lorraine's knee. But she did not speak for some minutes, and when she did all eagerness had vanished from her tone.