“No, no!” she insisted, “don’t go on.”
“But I haven’t half done yet! You will like India; you were born out there, and have often heard the East a-calling. You know you have always wished to see it, and India will like you. After making a bad start at seventeen, you begin life over again at twenty-nine, and I declare to you, Letty, you don’t look a day older than twenty-four—you and Cara might be sisters. Now what do you say?” and his eyes held hers with an intentness remarkable in human gaze.
After a pause she faltered:
“And what about Cara?”
“Cara!” he echoed. “Why, you will leave her at home, to be sure. You have done your share for her nobly, and it’s time she went to school—she is a big girl for her age.”
“Oh, but I could not part with her. If I were to desert her, and send her to England, her father would claim her at once. Couldn’t we take her out with us?”
“I’m afraid,” and he hesitated, “that Burmah—where I shall be for the next year—would be terribly trying for a girl of her age—in fact, to make no bones about it, if we took Cara out, she would be running a serious risk.”
“Then that settles it,” said her mother, with decision. “Lancelot, I am very, very sorry, unspeakably sorry—but you must return alone.”
It was in vain, that Major Lumley, like Mrs. Hesketh, argued and urged; his eloquence was wasted.
“I would go with you with joy and thankfulness to the end of the earth—but my first duty is to Cara.”