“The reason was this, as I afterward learned: that the state of Lady Enderby’s health made it impossible for me to be with them, especially in a lodging house.
“My father did not visit Weirdwaste again for a long time. He spent the winter with his wife and infant son at Torquay, and in the early summer took them to Switzerland, and in autumn to the Grecian Archipelago. In fact, two more years passed before I saw my father again.
“Then it was June and the height of the London season, and he had brought his wife to London and left her on a visit to her mother, the Baroness Burnshot. But on this occasion he brought my little brother over to Ireland and down to Weirdwaste.
“The child was now called Viscount Glennon, and was a beautiful boy nearly three years old.
“I was at that time a little old woman of eight. All the years that I have lived and all the sorrows that I have suffered have never made me as old as I was at eight.
“But again my heart leaped to meet father and brother, and I loved and adored them. I asked why my stepmother had not come with them. My father told me that she was much too frail to bear the sea air even in summer.
“He was satisfied with my health, and with my progress in learning, and so he left us, taking the boy with him.
“I had now been more than four years at dreary Weirdwaste, and had not known any home but the old manor house, or any society than its inmates. As these first four years passed so passed the next seven.
“My father came about once a year to see me, bringing my brother with him. He always spent a week at Weirdwaste, and then returned to England, taking my brother with him.
“His time was entirely devoted to his invalid wife, whose life seemed only to be prolonged by his incessant care.