she was now within easy reach of her two unmarried sisters, and after
the Cape, Gibraltar, Malta, and Dublin, the homes of her eldest sister,
and of her eldest brother did not seem very far off.

Indeed Beechcroft, the home of her childhood, had always been the
headquarters of herself and her children on their rare visits to
England. Her elder boys had been sure of a welcome there in the
holidays, and loved it scarcely less than she did herself; and when
looking for her present abode, the whole family had stayed there for
three months. Her brother Maurice, however, she had scarcely seen, and
she had been much pained at being included in his persistent avoidance
of the whole family, who felt that he resented their displeasure at his
marriage even more since his wife's death than he had done during her
lifetime, as if he felt doubly bound, for her sake, not to forgive and
forget. At least so said some of the family, while others hoped that
his distaste to all intercourse with them only arose from the apathy
succeeding a great blow.




CHAPTER III

GOOD-BYE



A passage was offered to Mr. Mohun in a Queen's ship, and this hurried
the preparations so much that to Dolores it appeared that there was
nothing but bustle and confusion, from the day of her conversation with