And so the days and weeks went by, and by general consent Launce Keymer\'s name was never mentioned at Rose Mount.

It was not owing to any lack of invitations that Ethel scarcely went anywhere that summer, but simply because of late she had lost all desire to do so. It is true that the Lovibonds and the Delaports and one or two other families at whose houses she had heretofore been a welcome visitor, nowadays saw fit to omit her name from the lists of those invited to their garden-parties and other festivities, but the major part of her friends were guilty of no such forgetfulness. To them her changed fortunes (for she could no longer be regarded as the heiress she once had been) made no apparent difference, and it was entirely her own fault that they saw so little of her.

But although Ethel chose to go scarcely anywhere, she was not without friends of her own age who came to seek her out in her self-imposed solitude and retail to her the very latest items of local gossip, consisting, as is usual in such cases, of a pretty equal admixture of fact and fiction. Thus it was that she came to learn of the violent quarrel which had taken place between Mr. Launce Keymer and his father, and of how the latter had cut down his son\'s allowance of three hundred a year to a pound a week. As a matter of course, a dozen different versions were afloat as to the origin of the quarrel, but, in reality, the facts of the case seemed to be known to no one except the two people concerned. Almost immediately afterwards Launce had left the town, and among all his intimates there was not one who professed to know where he had gone, or what had become of him.

All this was recounted to Ethel as a piece of news which would be likely to interest her as one who had known Launce Keymer and had met him several times in society in the course of the previous summer and winter. There was no faintest suspicion in the narrator\'s mind, so carefully had the secret of Ethel\'s brief engagement been kept, that for the latter her news might have an interest very different from any that she imagined.

When Ethel assured Miss Matilda that the wound from which she was suffering was one which time would quickly heal, she stated no more than she felt to be the fact. Between her and the man whose wife she had promised to become, everything was at an end; and although the relief was great--greater perhaps than she was aware of--she yet felt as if there was a void in her inner life which had never been there before. Her heart was empty. The doors of the temple were shut and the flame of the altar, which, truth to tell, had been of the frailest and feeblest, had been blown suddenly out. But Ethel turned away from brooding over the past and set her face resolutely towards the future.

And so the summer wore on until the crown of it was turned and autumn was drawing on apace. It was Tamsin, whose eyes were ever keen where her darling was concerned, who was the first to notice that the wild-rose tints of Ethel\'s cheeks were paling to the delicate ivory of the lily. She watched her closely for several days without saying a word to anyone. At length she made up her mind to speak. It was Miss Jane\'s month, and to her she went.

"The child will just end by moping herself into a decline," said the sturdy dame after a few preliminary remarks. "Look at her cheeks--not a morsel of colour left in \'em, but just as if it had all been washed out. And then, her appetite! I\'ve watched her at meal-times, and she hardly eats more than enough to keep a canary alive. And when did she sing last, pray, without being asked--she that used to be as merry as a thrush about the house and needed no asking at all? And her laugh that used to do one\'s heart good to hear--that\'s dead and buried. Whoever hears it nowadays?"

"But what is to be done, Tamsin?" pleaded Miss Jane, thoroughly frightened by the picture the old woman had drawn. "Where is a remedy to be found?"

"That is hardly for me to say, Miss Jane. But if Miss Ethel were a niece of mine, I\'m pretty clear what I would do."

"And what would that be, Tamsin? You know that my sister and I are always pleased to listen to your suggestions."

"I should take her right away to the seaside, or to some place where she\'s never been before. It\'s change the girl wants. At her age they all need it. It\'s only when folk get elderly that they grow loth to leave their own chimney-corner. Young birds always want to try their wings; and to young folk it always seems as if there must be something better on the far side of the hill than on the side their eyes are used to."

"But the expense," faltered Miss Jane. "My sister and I have very little money by us, and our next dividends will not be due till the new year. And at the seaside one is robbed so terribly--at least, that is what we term it--although they, no doubt, call it by a different name."

Tamsin was running her fingers along the bottom of her apron in a sort of diffident way altogether unusual with her. "If it\'s only a question of expense, Miss Jane, that can soon be got over," she said. "As it happens, I\'ve a matter of sixty pounds put away in the savings bank, not a penny of which will ever be the least bit of use to me--having neither chick nor child to leave it to. Take it, Miss Jane; it has been saved up out of the wages paid me by you and your sister. Take it and give the poor child the holiday she needs so sorely."

Rarely had Jane Thursby looked more distressed and perturbed than she did just then, and yet in her cheeks there was a delicate flush which for the passing moment made her seem almost a girl again. "How dare you, Tamsin, even to hint at such a thing!" she exclaimed in a voice which she vainly strove to render severe.

Then her lips began to tremble and a moisture shone in her eyes. Turning suddenly and laying a hand on each of Tamsin\'s shoulders, she said with a quaver in her voice: "You foolish but generous-hearted creature, cannot you see--cannot you understand how impossible it is that my sister and I should accept any such offer?"

"No, Miss Jane, with all deference to you, I can neither see nor understand why it should be so. The money was yours to begin with, and if you don\'t have it before, it will come back to you when I\'m dead and gone. I arranged that with Lawyer Tullock half a year agone. It\'s only a trifle, I know, but it\'s enough to pay for a month or two at the seaside; and to what better use could it be put, I should like to know, than in helping to bring back the roses to Miss Ethel\'s cheeks. So do you and Miss Matilda just put your pride in your pocket and take it with an old woman\'s blessing!"

"Oh no, we cannot, we ............