way. If my aunt had but been able to make some arrangement! No doubt it
was upon her mind when she asked so often for me!"

"Yes, but there is this comfort," said Mrs. Wortley, seeing him much
troubled, "that she did not seem to make herself anxious and restless on
their account. She trusted them, and so may we."

"Yes, that is all that one can come to," said Edmund, sighing deeply.
"But Gerald! One pities Marian the most now, but it is a more serious
matter for him."

"Gerald will be more in your power than his sister," said Mrs. Wortley.

"As if that was much comfort," said Edmund, half smiling, then again
sighing, "when even for my own concerns I miss my uncle's advice at
every turn. And probably I may have to go on foreign service next year."

"Then he will be at school."

"Yes. He was not to have gone till he was ten years old, but I shall try
to hasten it now. He must go with his sister to Oakworthy though, for to
begin without him there would be complete desolation in her eyes."

Here the conversation was concluded by Marian's coming down to write her
painfully composed letters. That to her cousin, Lady Marchmont, who,
as Selina Grenville, had been a frequent and favourite visitor at the
manor, ran glibly enough off the pen, and the two or three quiet tears
that blotted the paper, fell from a feeling of affection rather than of
regret; but the letter to old Mrs. Jessie Arundel, her great aunt, and
one or two others which Edmund had desired her to write, were works of