Lady Lundie's health had b een failing for some time previously. The
medical men, consulted on the case, agreed that a sea-voyage was the one
change needful to restore their patient's wasted strength--exactly at
the time, as it happened, when Sir Thomas was due again in India. For
his wife's sake, he agreed to defer his return, by taking the sea-voyage
with her. The one difficulty to get over was the difficulty of leaving
Blanche and Anne behind in England.

Appealed to on this point, the doctors had declared that at Blanche's
critical time of life they could not sanction her going to India with
her mother. At the same time, near and dear relatives came forward, who
were ready and anxious to give Blanche and her governess a home--Sir
Thomas, on his side, engaging to bring his wife back in a year and a
half, or, at most, in two years' time. Assailed in all directions, Lady
Lundie's natural unwillingness to leave the girls was overruled. She
consented to the parting--with a mind secretly depressed, and secretly
doubtful of the future.

At the last moment she drew Anne Silvester on one side, out of hearing
of the rest. Anne was then a young woman of twenty-two, and Blanche a
girl of fifteen.

"My dear," she said, simply, "I must tell _you_ what I can not tell Sir
Thomas, and what I am afraid to tell Blanche. I am going away, with
a mind that misgives me. I am persuaded I shall not live to return to
England; and, when I am dead, I believe my husband will marry again.
Years ago your mother was uneasy, on her death-bed, about _your_ future.
I am uneasy, now, about Blanche's future. I promised my dear dead friend
that you should be like my own child to me--and it quieted her
mind. Quiet my mind, Anne, before I go. Whatever happens in years to