‘Never!’ cried Mysie. ‘Eight across the world you will always be my own twin cousin.’
The wishes of the girl were so far fulfilled that Lady Merrifield took her to London to provide her outfit, and Mysie accompanied them. A room and its dressing-room received the three at old Mrs. Merrifield’s, and the two cousins thought their close quarters ineffably precious.
Mysie was introduced to Maude Sefton, who seemed entirely unconscious of her treachery to friendship. ‘One had so little time, and couldn’t always be writing,’ she said, when Dolores reproached her; ‘exercises were enough to tire out one’s hand!’
They also drank tea with Lady Phyllis Devereux and her governess. Fly could not pour forth questions and reminiscences fast enough about all the beloved animals at Silverton, not forgetting the little G.F.S. nursemaid, for whom she had actually made an apron in her plain-work lessons. Moreover, she deemed Dolores’s fate most enviable, to be going off with her father to strange countries, away from lessons, and masters, and towns. It would be almost as good as Leila on the island.
As to the Beechcroft visit, Mr. and Mrs. Mohun collected all the brothers and sisters in England there for a week, and still Mysie and Dolores were allowed to be together, squeezed into a corner of Lady Merrifield’s room. It was high summer, bright and glowing, and so dry, and even the invalidish sisters, Lady Henry Gray and Miss Adeline Mohun could not object to the sitting out on the lawn, among the dragonflies, as in days of yore.
Much of old thought and feeling was then and there taken up again, and it was on one of the last evenings of the visit that Mr. Mohun, walking up and down the alley with Lady Merrifield, said—
‘Well, Lily, I think my determination to take Dolly away was hasty. I cannot leave her now, but if I had understood all that I see at present, I should have been both content and grateful to have her among your children. I am afraid I have been ungracious.’
‘I never thought so, Maurice. It is quite right that she should be with you, and Phyllis will do every-thing for her much better than I.’
‘Poor child! I believe she is very sorry to go,’ said Mr. Mohun; ‘but, at any rate, she will remember Silverton as, I hope, a lasting influence on her life.’
Dolores truly believed that so it would be, and that her aunt’s guidance would be always looked back upon as the turning-point of her life.