I
cannot leave her now, but if I had understood all that I see at
present, I should have been both content and grateful to have her among
your children. I am afraid I have been ungracious.'
'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.
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