Some happy years followed this good beginning. Years not untouched by trouble and trials, but with an undercurrent of good. Barmettle never became a congenial home, but Jacinth as she grew older lost her extreme dislike to it, in the happiness of being all together, and knowing that not only was her father satisfied with his work, but that many opportunities for helping others were open to herself and Frances, as well as to their active unselfish mother.
And bright holidays with Lady Myrtle, when old Robin Redbreast stretched his wings in some wonderful way so as to take in his kind owner's grand-nephews and nieces as well as the Mildmay party, went far to reconcile Jacinth and Frances to the gloom and chill of their home in the north.
Perhaps Christmas was the most trying time. For a merry family party would have been something to look forward to at that season. But the dear old lady, alas! had spent her last Christmas in England that year—that first year at Thetford—when Jacinth and Frances and Eugene were her guests. For her health grew more and more fragile, and every season her time at Robin Redbreast had to be cut shorter and shorter, till at length barely six months of the twelve could be spent by her in England.
Most winters Jacinth spent some part of with her at Basse, and sometimes Camilla or Bessie replaced her. One year the whole Mildmay family joined her for two months. So there were many pleasant mitigations of her enforced banishment, though it gradually became impossible for those who had learned to love her so dearly to blind themselves to the fact that the gentle old woman was not far from the end of her chequered and at one time lonely life.
And one day in the early spring-time, when the sunshine was already warm and the sky already deeply blue in the genial south, when the snowdrops were raising their pretty timid heads in the garden at Robin Redbreast, and the birds were beginning to hope that the winter was over and gone, Lady Myrtle died. There was no one with her at the time. Captain Harper had left her but the week before, and Jacinth Mildmay was to have joined her a few days later.
'If I could but have been with her, mamma,' said the girl among her tears.
But perhaps it was better not. To some natures the sorrow of others is very hard to see, and I think Lady Myrtle was one of those. Jacinth was nineteen at the time of her old friend's death. Two years of Colonel Mildmay's time at Barmettle had yet to expire.
'We shall miss our summers at Robin Redbreast sadly, mamma, shall we not?' she said one day. 'What is to be done about it? Is it to be sold, or are the Harpers to have it? I hope so. Does papa know?'
'He has only heard about it recently,' said her mother. 'He and Captain Harper are Lady Myrtle's executors, but there has been a good deal of trouble and delay, for owing to her death having taken place abroad, some difficulties occurred about proving the will. But now I believe all is right, and your father is going to tell you about it.'