This letter reached Cheltenham a few days after Cissy had left. It lay for some time in the senior Mrs. Archer’s house, that lady being ill or away from home, and was then sent on to India, where Cissy received it by the same mail as another letter from Ralph sent to India direct, which we shall hear about presently.
The other letter, that directed to Miss Freer, never reached its destination, never, at least, as we have seen, came to Marion’s hands. Its history was never known. Probably enough it arrived at Mrs. Archer’s house, and some stupid or officious servant, seeing the unfamiliar name, may have said, after the manner of her kind, it was “not for us,” and sent the poor letter adrift again.
[CHAPTER] IX.
RALPH (continued.)
“Which when his mother saw, she in her mind
Was troubled sore, ne wist well what to weene;
Ne could by search nor any means out find
The secret cause and nature of his teene.
* * * * * *
Unto himself she tame and him besought,
If aught lay hidden in his grieved thought,
It to reveal: who still her answered there was nought.
FAIRY QUEEN, CANTO XII.
BY this time April was pretty far advanced.
Suddenly, after an interval of some weeks’ temperate weather succeeding the usual spring rains, Altes grew intolerably hot, and every one began to desert the poor little town as if it we plague stricken.
Some weeks previously, Lady Severn had engaged for the six months’ summer, a villa at Vevey, and thither she now decided on removing herself and her rather cumbrous household. Much to Ralph’s disappointment. He was heartily sick of living abroad in this unhomelike fashion, and had been for long hoping that the approaching summer would see Medhurst once more inhabited. But to this wish of his, his mother was as yet unwilling to agree. She still shrank from returning to the place where the light of her eyes, her eldest son, had met his death, and succeeded in persuading herself that on every account, Sybil’s especially, it was better for them all to remain on the continent for another year.
So they left Altes at the end of April.