“You are the making of the school,” she said. “You keep all those unruly girls in order. They adore you; you teach them English most beautifully, and you are my right hand. Why should you leave me?”
“I suppose it is my duty,” said Marcia. She paused for a minute and looked straight before her. She and Mrs Silchester were in a private sitting room belonging to the latter lady, who glanced firmly at the tall, fine, handsome girl.
“Duty,” she said, “it is a sorry bugbear sometimes, isn’t it?”
“To me it is,” said Marcia. “I have sacrificed all my life to my sense of duty; but perhaps I am mistaken.”
“I do not think so; it seems the only thing to do.”
“Then in that case I will write and say that I will go back at once.”
“I tell you what, my dear, if your mother is better when you return, and you can so arrange matters, I will keep this place open for you. I will get a lady in as a substitute for a short time; I won’t have a permanent teacher, but I will have you back. When you return to England, write to me and tell me if there is any use my pursuing this idea.”
Marcia said firmly:
“I know I shall never be able to return; once I am back I shall have to stay. There is no use in thinking of anything else.”
Now the whole thing was over; the girls had cried and had clung to her, had lavished their love upon her, and the other teachers were sorry, and Mrs Silchester had almost shed tears—she who never cried. But it was over; the wrench had been made, the parting was at an end. Their bright lives would go on; they would still enjoy their fun and their lessons; they could go to the opera, to the theatre; they would still have their little tea parties, and their friends would take them about, and they would have a better time than English girls of their class usually have. They would talk privately to each other just the same as ever, about their future homes, and their probable dots, and of the sort of husbands that had been arranged for them to marry, and how much linen their good mothers were putting away into great linen chests for them to carry away with them. They would talk to each other of all these things, and she, who had been part and parcel of the life, would be out of it. She always would be out of it in the future.