After uttering petitions to this effect for several days, she still felt very bad; indeed, in the psychological difficulty of striving for what in her soul she did not desire, rather worse, if anything.  At last, weary of walking the old road and never meeting him, and blank in a general powerlessness, she wrote the letter to Ethelberta, which was only the last one of a series that had previously been written and torn up.

Now this hope had been whirled away like thistledown, and the case was grievous enough to distract a greater stoic than Picotee.  The end of it was that she left the school on insufficient notice, gave up her cottage home on the plea—­true in the letter—­that she was going to join a relative in London, and went off thither by a morning train, leaving her things packed ready to be sent on when she should write for them.

Picotee arrived in town late on a cold February afternoon, bearing a small bag in her hand.  She crossed Westminster Bridge on foot, just after dusk, and saw a luminous haze hanging over each well-lighted street as it withdrew into distance behind the nearer houses, showing its direction as a train of morning mist shows the course of a distant stream when the stream itself is hidden.  The lights along the riverside towards Charing Cross sent an inverted palisade of gleaming swords down into the shaking water, and the pavement ticked to the touch of pedestrians’ feet, most of whom tripped along as if walking only to practise a favourite quick step, and held handkerchiefs to their mouths to strain off the river mist from their lungs.  She inquired her way to Exonbury Crescent, and between five and six o’clock reached her sister’s door.

Two or three minutes were passed in accumulating resolution sufficient to ring the bell, which when at last she did, was not performed in a way at all calculated to make the young man Joey hasten to the door.  After the lapse of a certain time he did, however, find leisure to stroll and see what the caller might want, out of curiosity to know who there could be in London afraid to ring a bell twice.

Joey’s delight exceeded even his surprise, the ruling maxim of his life being the more the merrier, under all circumstances.  The beaming young man was about to run off and announce her upstairs and downstairs, left and right, when Picotee called him hastily to her.  In the hall her quick young eye had caught sight of an umbrella with a peculiar horn handle—­an umbrella she had been accustomed to meet on Sandbourne Moor on many happy afternoons.  Christopher was evidently in the house.

‘Joey,’ she said, as if she were ready to faint, ’don’t tell Berta I am come.  She has company, has she not?’

‘O no—­only Mr. Julian!’ said the brother.  ’He’s quite one of the family!’

‘Never mind—­can’t I go down into the kitchen with you?’ she inquired.  There had been bliss and misery mingled in those tidings, and she scarcely knew for a moment which way they affected her.  What she did know was that she had run her dear fox to earth, and a sense of satisfaction at that feat prevented her just now from counting the cost of the performance.