really-though she would not have confessed it even to herself-was less troubled and anxious about him than she had been since he had begun to 'roam in youth's uncertain wilds.' Indeed, there were hopes that slow recovery might find him a much changed person in character.
He had become so uninterested in his former predilections that he heard with little emotion that Vera was to marry Petros White.
'I thought she would take up with some cad,' he said. But his family were really glad that this wedding was to take place at Rocca Marina, whither the two sisters and Magdalen were invited.
Paulina would not go. She still resented the treatment of Hubert Delrio, and she was devoted to her study of nursing at the Dearport Sisterhood; but Magdalen thought it right to take Thekla, and give her the advantages of improvement in languages, and the sight of fine scenery.
And certainly Rocca Marina was a wonderful place for marriages. Vera, handsome and happy and likely to turn into a fairly good commonplace wife, had no sooner been sent off on a honeymoon tour to Greece and Egypt, and Mrs. White had begged the other two to prolong their visit, considering, perhaps, if one or the other aunt or niece could not be promoted to the vacant post of lady-in-waiting, than Hubert Delrio came to secure specimens of marble for some mosaic work on which he was engaged. He was fast becoming a man of mark, whom the Whites were delighted to receive and entertain, and who was delighted to be with the old friends who had had so great an influence on his life. And was it Magdalen alone to whom he chiefly looked up as his helper and guide? So he thought; but before the time of separation had come, he had found out that Thekla was far prettier than ever Vera had been, and with a mind and principle-no Flapsy, but a real sympathetic and poetic nature, which had grown up in these years. Young as she was, their destinies were fixed.
And Magdalen? The railroad had obtained authority to pass through the Goyle, and thus break up her home and shelter. Still she was not tempted by Adeline White's desire to make her a companion; but rather she accepted the plan on which Dolores had first started, and on which Elizabeth Merrifield and Miss Arthuret were set, of making her the head of their home at Penbeacon, partly a convalescent home, and partly a training college for young women in need of technical instruction in nursing or other possible feminine avocations. Tom May was delighted with all it might set on foot, and Clement saw in her leading the hopes that a high and pure spirit might inspire it.
Footnotes:
{100} It is Russian, and means Faith.
