"Oh Auntie, what about Father? And you were engaged to him."
"Well, anyhow," said Adeline, softened by the recollection, "I was engaged."
She smiled her enchanting smile; and Anne, observing the breakdown of dignity, got up off the bed and kissed her.
"I don't suppose," she said, "that Father was the only one."
"He wasn't. But then, with me, my dear, it was their own risk. They knew where they were."
v
In March, nineteen eleven, Eliot went out to Central Africa. He stayed there two years, investigating malaria and sleeping sickness. Then he went on to the Straits Settlements and finally took a partnership in a practice at Penang.
Anne left Wyck at Easter and returned in August because of Colin. Then she went back to her Ilford farm.
The two years passed, and in the spring of the third year, nineteen fourteen, she came again.