'Oh, dear Lady Myrtle, dear, dear friend,' she said, and the tears were in her eyes, 'don't speak like that. I cannot bear it. You say there can be no sort of compromise, but surely there can be of one kind; you will not, you cannot expect us to leave off looking to you and feeling to you as our best and dearest friend?'
And she threw her arms round the old lady as Francie might have done, and was not repulsed.
'You will let me have Jacinth sometimes?' whispered Lady Myrtle.
'Of course, of course; whenever you like and as much as you like,' said Mrs Mildmay eagerly.
'I will not be unreasonable,' the old lady said with one of the half-wistful smiles that were so touching. 'Even if—if everything had been going to be as I hoped, I would never have wished or expected anything which could have interfered with her home ties and duties. And I need scarcely say I will never come upon this subject that we have been discussing, with her. I will leave it entirely to you, her parents, to tell her what you think right, though I own I should like her to realise how I have been thinking of her.'
'Ah well!' said Lady Myrtle, 'another dream vanished!'
'That she certainly shall,' exclaimed Mrs Mildmay impulsively. And though a moment afterwards she was tempted to murmur to herself 'at all costs,' she did not repent of her promise. 'It would not be fair to Lady Myrtle for Jacinth to be told nothing,' she reflected. 'And scarcely indeed fair to the child herself. For I cannot but believe she will see it all as we do.'
So that afternoon Colonel Mildmay wrote to accept the appointment offered him up at gloomy, smoky Barmettle in the dreary north country.