He walked straight to a certain spot on the carpet, not far from the window that led into the garden, and nearly opposite the door.  On that spot he stood silently, with his head on his breast—­thinking.  Was it there he had seen her for the last time, on the day when he left the room forever?  Yes; it was there.  After a minute or so he roused himself, but in a dreamy, absent manner.  He said it was a pretty place, and expressed his thanks, and looked back before the door closed, and then went his way again.  His carriage picked him up where it had set him down.  He drove to the residence of the new Lord Holchester, and left a card for him.  Then he went home.  Arrived at his house, his secretary reminded him that he had an appointment in ten minutes’ time.  He thanked the secretary in the same dreamy, absent manner in which he had thanked the owner of the villa, and went into his dressing-room.  The person with whom he had made the appointment came, and the secretary sent the valet up stairs to knock at the door.  There was no answer.  On trying the lock it proved to be turned inside.  They broke open the door, and saw him lying on the sofa.  They went close to look—­and found him dead by his own hand.

VIII.

Drawing fast to its close, the Prologue reverts to the two girls—­and tells, in a few words, how the years passed with Anne and Blanche.

Lady Lundie more than redeemed the solemn pledge that she had given to her friend.  Preserved from every temptation which might lure her into a longing to follow her mother’s career; trained for a teacher’s life, with all the arts and all the advantages that money could procure, Anne’s first and only essays as a governess were made, under Lady Lundie’s own roof, on Lady Lundie’s own child.  The difference in the ages of the girls—­seven years—­the love between them, which seemed, as time went on, to grow with their growth, favored the trial of the experiment.  In the double relation of teacher and friend to little Blanche, the girlhood of Anne Silvester the younger passed safely, happily, uneventfully, in the modest sanctuary of home.  Who could imagine a contrast more complete than the contrast between her early life and her mother’s?  Who could see any thing but a death-bed delusion in the terrible question which had tortured the mother’s last moments:  “Will she end like Me?”

But two events of importance occurred in the quiet family circle during the lapse of years which is now under review.  In eighteen hundred and fifty-eight the household was enlivened by the arrival of Sir Thomas Lundie.  In eighteen hundred and sixty-five the household was broken up by the return of Sir Thomas to India, accompanied by his wife.

Lady Lundie’s health had b een failing for some time previously.  The medical men, consulted on the case, agreed that a sea-voyage was the one change needful to restore their patient’s wasted strength—­exactly at the time, as it happened, when Sir Thomas was due again in India.  For his wife’s sake, he agreed to defer his return, by taking the sea-voyage with her.  The one difficulty to get over was the difficulty of leaving Blanche and Anne behind in England.