"You'll change it, dear, when mamma is here, and things are comfortable again. It's my belief that Mr. Glascock would come to you again to-morrow if you would let him." Mrs. Trevelyan was, naturally, in complete ignorance of the experience of transatlantic excellence which Mr. Glascock had encountered in Italy.
"But I certainly should not let him. How would it be possible after what I wrote to Hugh?"
"All that might pass away," said Mrs. Trevelyan,—slowly, after a long pause.
"All what might pass away? Have I not given him a distinct promise? Have I not told him that I loved him, and sworn that I would be true to him? Can that be made to pass away,—even if one wished it?"
"Of course it can. Nothing need be fixed for you till you have stood at the altar with a man and been made his wife. You may choose still. I can never choose again."
"I never will, at any rate," said Nora.
Then there was another pause. "It seems strange to me, Nora," said the elder sister, "that after what you have seen you should be so keen to be married to any one."
"What is a girl to do?"
"Better drown herself than do as I have done. Only think what there is before me. What I have gone through is nothing to it. Of course I must go back to the Islands. Where else am I to live? Who else will take me?"
"Come to us," said Nora.