Two years! A very short time to the old, but not so to the young, especially in anticipation. That autumn day when Philippa Raynsworth bade good-bye to her kind friends at Dorriford, she little expected that twice twelve months would pass before she returned there, and had this period been then alluded to, it would have seemed to her half a lifetime off.

What might not happen in two years? To her, standing at the very threshold of life, with every possibility before her, two years would have been almost like two score.

Yet when, in the autumn but one following the Easter of her first visit to Palden, she found herself again at Dorriford, she could hardly believe that two whole years had elapsed since the day when Mrs Lermont kissed her so affectionately, and made her promise to return to them as soon as she could do so.

She was again within a day or two of leaving them, after a quiet but pleasant fortnight with Maida – poor Maida, she was no stronger in health, possibly a shade more fragile than when she and Philippa had last met. But as ever, the fact of her invalidism was never obtruded on those about her, even, on the contrary, to a great extent ignored.

They – the two cousins – had been strolling for a little, a very little only was all Miss Lermont was able for now – up and down the already leaf-strewn drive. The day was mild and calm, a typical autumn day.

Suddenly Maida spoke.

“Do you remember, Philippa,” she said – “it has just come back to me – the last time you were here, our standing in the porch and watching the Bertrams drive away?”

Philippa smiled. There was no bitterness in her smile, though it was perhaps a little sad.

“Yes,” she said, with a little bending of her head as she spoke, “yes, I remember.”

Maida glanced at her.

“You are changed since then,” she went on.

“It is two years ago,” said Philippa. “Two years may alter one a good deal – even less time than that – for I recollect your saying at Cannes, within six months of the time I was here, that I had changed.”

“I remember it, too,” said her cousin. “But now I should express it differently. At Cannes you were changing; you seemed unsettled and uncertain, though in some ways matured, and – do not be hurt at the word – softened. But now you are changed, the process is completed.”

“I hope for the better?” inquired Philippa. She spoke lightly, but there was an undercurrent of earnestness in her words, too.

“To my mind, if it is not impertinent of me to give my opinion,” said Maida, gently, “very certainly yes. You are just what I pictured you would be as a full-grown woman, though – ”

“Don’t stop short. I like to know all you feel about me. It does me good.”

“I was going to say I scarcely saw how anything but the discipline of sorrow could make you quite what I wanted you to be, my darling,” Miss Lermont replied. And the unwonted expression of affection touched Philippa. “And I trembled at the thought. I am cowardly about suffering for those I love. Yet how short-sighted we are! Here you are, with all the softening, and mellowing, and widening I hoped for, done – and yet – no special suffering has, so far as I know, fallen to your share. Don’t think me inquisitive,” she added, hastily. “I don’t want you to tell me anything you would rather not.”

Philippa hesitated.

“I have often thought of telling you the whole history of my life during the six or eight months after I was last here,” she said. “All my experiences – my personal experiences, I mean – seemed compressed into that time. Since then things have gone on very monotonously, though I have not been either dull or unhappy. You see it was so clear to me that it was my duty to stay at home and help papa again, after Charley so unexpectedly got that splendid piece of work in India. And with Evelyn settled at home so comfortably and no anxiety about her, things just settled down somehow. These last eighteen months have been most uneventful.”

“You might have varied them by a little visit to us,” said Maida.

“Truly I could not,” Philippa replied, earnestly. “The one time I could have come, you remember Mrs Lermont was ill and you were fully engaged. I have only been to Palden once – that was last winter – for ten days.”

“Is not Evelyn vexed with you for not going more frequently?”

“No,” said Philippa. “She knows I could not help it. Now, of course – with Charley back – I shall be comparatively free. But – I don’t care to go much to Palden.”

“I think I know why,” said Maida. “Has it not to do with what you have often thought of telling me? And are you going to tell it to me?”

“On the whole,” said Philippa, “if you will not think me capricious, I think I would rather not. Some day, perhaps.”

“As you like, dear, exactly and entirely as you like. But – if I may ask you something?”

“Of course you may.”

“I would like to know – I cannot quite master my curiosity, you see, and indeed it is more interest in you than curiosity – I would like to know why you refused Bernard Gresham. For I am sure you did refuse him.”

“Yes, I did,” said Philippa, simply. “And I do not at all mind telling you why. It was just because I became entirely convinced that he and I were thoroughly unsuited to each other.”

Maida made a little gesture of agreement.

“I should not express it quite as you do,” she said. “I should say he was not worthy of you – not that I think ill of him in any way, but he is simply on a different level altogether. At first, I will own to you, I was disappointed when I saw it was not going to be. I was ‘worldly’ for you, Philippa. But I saw more of him again at Cannes last winter, and – I lost all feeling of disappointment. Even when I thought that you had refused to marry out of exaggerated ideas as to your duties at home – even then I did not regret it.”

Philippa shook her head.

“No,” she said, “home things had nothing to do with it. At the time I refused him there was no special need of me at home. And my parents are too unselfish to have allowed a sacrifice of that kind; something else would have been arranged. No; I have given you my full reason. But – how I came to find out what I did – that,” with a slight smile, “is my secret. And my great reason for not telling you the whole story is that I know mamma would rather I did not tell it, even to you.”

“She knows everything?”

“Everything,” said Philippa, “and she does so ‘understand.’ And never for one moment have I regretted what I did. But Evey,” she went on, “poor Evey, is still a little sore about it. She does not know quite the whole, as mamma does.”

“Thank you, dear, for telling me all you have done,” said Maida. And then after a little pause: “Do you think you will never marry, Philippa? Has it left that feeling?”

“No, not exactly,” said the girl, frankly. “You see, after all, it was not him I cared for; it was something I believed, or thought I believed him to be. I don’t think I shall ever marry, however. I suppose, though it sounds rather conceited to say so, that it would be difficult for me ever to feel quite sure I was not making a mistake.”

She looked down at Miss Lermont as she spoke – Maida was by this time indoors and on her couch again – with a half-questioning look in her eyes.

“Don’t exaggerate that idea,” her friend replied, rather abruptly. “After all, every woman is in the same case? And remember you have not seen many men; your life has been to some extent isolated. Don’t begin to think there are hardly any happy marriages. It is a trick of the day to talk so.”

Philippa’s face grew rather red.

“Don’t snub me so severely,” she said. “Put a little of my hesitation down to humility.”

Miss Lermont laughed.

“Ah, well,” she said. “If the time ever comes when your hesitation vanishes, promise to let me know at once.”

Philippa was to leave Dorriford the next day. That morning brought her a letter from her brother Charley.

“I am only writing,” he said, “to make sure of your keeping to your train. I am going up to town for a night, and will meet you at the junction to-morrow on my way home again. And, by-the-by, I am half thinking of asking a friend to stay two or three days with us. I had not time to tell you about him before you left home,” – for Charley Raynsworth had only returned from the East a day or two before Philippa’s visit to the Lermonts – “we had so much to talk about. He is a civil engineer whom I saw a good deal of in India, and he came home a few weeks ago for good. His name is Gresham – he says he met you at Merle once. Do you remember him? I am sure my father and all of you will like him.”

Philippa’s breath came quick and short for a moment on reading these words.

“How strange,” she thought, “that Charley and he should have been thrown together! ‘Met me at Merle’ – yes, indeed —that day! Once I see him I daresay it will seem all right. But just at present I feel almost more self-conscious about our last meeting than about the time at Wyverston. I wonder,” she added to herself, “if dear Solomon has been in India too!”

There was still a little flush of excitement on her face when she ran up-stairs to say good-bye to her cousin Maida, whose slowly increasing weakness was steadily but surely diminishing the hours which she was each day able to spend down-stairs.

“How well you are looking this morning, dear! Are you so delighted to go home, and not the least bit sorry to leave us?” she said, with half-playful reproach.

“Of course I am sorry to leave you, dear, dear Maida,” said Philippa, tenderly. “I am feeling very pleased though, this morning, for I have just heard that Charley will meet me at the junction, and I don’t think I had fully realised how nice it is to have him back again,” she added in explanation, which was strictly true so far as it went. And indeed in her anticipation of meeting Michael Gresham again, she could scarcely have described her sensations as pleasurable or the reverse.

A few words from Philippa announcing her safe arrival at home, and ending with affectionate expressions of gratitude to her kind cousins, reached Dorriford the following day.

Then came a blank extending over a fortnight, by the end of which time Miss Lermont began to fear that something must be the matter at Greenleaves.

She was on the point of writing again to Philippa to inquire the cause of her silence, when a letter arrived. It was a long letter and marked “private,” though no restrictions were placed on Maida as to making known to her family the news it contained.

“My hesitation has vanished,” were the words with which Philippa preluded the announcement of her engagement to Michael Gresham. “I am perfectly happy, perfectly satisfied, though it has been difficult for me to believe myself worthy of him. But as he thinks I am – ”

More practical details followed. It was not a “brilliant” marriage, such as Evelyn Headfort had dreamt of for her sister. A life of some restrictions, even possibly of a certain amount of struggle, was before her and Michael, but a life brightened and ennobled by high aims and many worthy interests outside themselves, by, above all, completest confidence and mutual sympathy.

“It seems almost ideal,” thought Maida, as she finished the letter. “I can feel no fears or apprehensions about a marriage like that, whatever the world may say as to the necessity of wealth.”

For Maida’s eyes were growing very clear as to the real estimate of things – she was nearing the heights where earth-born clouds and mists begin to melt away in the everlasting sunshine.

Up to the present time, Bernard Gresham is still unmarried, not having as yet succeeded in discovering the flawless gem among women, to whom he could without misgiving entrust his happiness, and who alone would be fitted to shine as mistress of Merle. He now by no means regrets Philippa’s little looked-for refusal of the honour he laid before her, vainly as he has endeavoured satisfactorily to account to himself for it. But as his cousin’s wife he quite approves of her, and he is always ready cordially to welcome her and her husband when they can spare a week or two for a visit to Merle, on which occasions it is unnecessary to say that “Solomon” again figures as one of Philippa’s fellow-travellers.

The End.