CHAPTER XVIII.

PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT.

NOTHING Could exceed the warmth and kindliness of the welcome that awaited me in Bloomsbury Square, and if the most considerate attentions, mingled with loving words from each member of the family, could have lifted the weight from my heart, I should not long have groaned under it. But everything here reminded me of Effie, and the contrast of my present arrival with the former one, only six months ago, presented

itself so vividly to my mind, that during all that first evening I could answer none of their questions without tears, and it was not surprising that they should say they had never seen a person so much altered in a few weeks as I was.

The next day I was calm enough to discover that others besides myself were altered. Mrs. Errol and her two eldest girls, though active and busy as usual, had lost (it might be only for a time), the cheerful animation that had formerly made them so charming, and given such a peculiar brightness to the home circle. This second death, occurring so soon after the first, had evidently affected them very deeply, perhaps more even in reference to its probable influence on Richard's destiny (for he was so beloved in his family), than on their own account.

But the most striking and serious change I observed was in Isabel. She, who had been like

a constant sunbeam in the house, had subsided into a quiet, melancholy, unsociable, and occasionally irritable girl. Nothing pleased, nothing interested her, and I could not doubt, even before I spoke to Catherine about it, that this was one of the trials that the mothers and sisters were so pathetically lamenting, and which had chased much of the gladness I missed from their affectionate hearts.

"It is too true," said Catherine, in reply to a question of mine, as to whether these symptoms in her youngest sister had not appeared long before Effie's illness gave them all an excuse for depression. "Poor Isabel has never been the same since Arthur Vincent ceased to come here. Mamma is wretched about her, and has tried every means of gaining her confidence, but the moment the subject is even remotely touched upon, Bella changes colour so rapidly and remarkably, that we are afraid this pining has

brought on some heart disease that it would be dangerous to increase by any kind of agitation." "Have you not consulted a doctor?"

"No, because it would be useless doing so without telling him the truth, and I am sure the poor girl would die of the shame of having her weakness commented upon."

"What a pity that young man should ever have become so intimate here. I suppose you have heard nothing of him since he left England?"

"Yes; he has written to Richard twice, I believe, the last time from Rome where they were going to spend the winter. And mamma sent him a paper the other day with an account of our poor Effie's death."

I made no remark on this to Catherine, but I thought that for once dear Mrs. Errol had done a very foolish thing, though of course she knew not wherein its folly consisted.

I only allowed myself one day to rest-and

that was Christmas day, and a very cheerless festival for all of us-before commencing my preparations for leaving England; and as I had really a good deal to do, the constant occupation helped me to get through the dull cold sunless days without being conscious of any increase of that depression which I supposed then would be habitual to me.

Mr. Errol returned home three days after my arrival, bringing the intelligence that Mr. Seymour progressed very slowly, and that he had made Richard promise to remain at the Vicarage till the beginning of the new year.

There was no special message to me from either of them, and though I had no reason to expect such a thing, I was grievously disappointed, which must have arisen, I suppose, from the weakened state of my mind, and its blind grasping at every straw that seemed to hold out a hope of comfort.