‘I never thought so, Maurice. It is quite right that she should be with you, and Phyllis will do every-thing for her much better than I.’
‘Poor child! I believe she is very sorry to go,’ said Mr. Mohun; ‘but, at any rate, she will remember Silverton as, I hope, a lasting influence on her life.’
Dolores truly believed that so it would be, and that her aunt’s guidance would be always looked back upon as the turning-point of her life.
‘It is my own fault,’ she said, as on the last night she clung tearfully to Lady Merrifield; ‘if I had behaved better I might have gone on just like one of your own.’
‘You will still be in my heart like one of my own, dear child,’ said Lady Merrifield. ‘We know the way in which we all can hold together as one; keep to that, and the distance apart will matter the less.’
And as they watched Dolores and her father driven away to the station the next morning, Jane Mohun laid her hand on her sister’s arm and said, ‘You thought you had made a great failure. Lily, but is not the other side of a failure often a success?’
By-and-by came letters from Dolores. She seemed after the first to have enjoyed her journey, for, as she wrote to Lady Merrifield, in a letter, very private, and all to her own self, ‘Father was so very good and kind to me, I don’t know how to tell you. It was as if a little bit of mother had got into him, and now I am here I think I shall like the Mays. Indeed, I am trying to remember your advice, and not beginning by hating everybody and thinking who they are not. Aunt Phyllis is very nice indeed, and sometimes her eyes and mouth get like Mysie’s, and her voice is just exactly yours. Only she is plump and roundabout, not a dear, tall, graceful figure like my White Lily Aunt. Please don’t call it nonsense, for indeed I mean it, and Aunt Phyllis does like your photograph so much. I have the whole group hung up in my room, and you over it, and I wish you all good morning every day, for I never, never, as long as I live, shall love anybody like you and Mysie.’
THE END.