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Long prepared for some such emergency, Mary took control. Dispatching the groom at a gallop for the doctor, she mixed a soothing-draught for Lizzie (��See to her first,�� was John��s whispered request) and gave John the strongest opiate she dared. The children were put in the carriage, and sent to ��Ultima Thule.�� Then, as Richard had directed, Mary cleared the sickroom of superfluous furniture; while Emmy bore a note to Miss Julia �� Mary��s sole confidante. And faithful to a promise, Miss Julia was back with Emmy inside an hour. Without her aid she at once saw to Lizzie, and brought the servants to their senses �� without this sane, calm presence, Mary did not know how she would have managed, John from the start obstinately refusing to let her out of his sight. Or for that matter without Emmy either . . . Emmy was her right hand. Nimble, yet light-footed as a cat; tireless; brave; Emmy now proved her mettle. Nothing was beneath her: she performed the most menial duties of the sickroom with a kind of fiery, inner gratitude. And, these done, would sit still as a mouse, a scrap of needlework in her hand, just waiting for the chance of springing up afresh. Her young face grew thin and peaked, and the life went out of her step; but she never complained, or sought to obtrude her own feelings. Only one person knew what she was suffering. It was on Auntie Julia��s neck that she had had her single breakdown, and wept out her youthful passion of love and despair.

��Now, madam! . . . wasn��t I right? Who was the success of the evening I should like to know?��

Well, this ended it. He could not picture himself going on living there with a nervous eye eternally cocked at Mary to see how she was comporting herself, or how what she did struck the wretched group of snobs he had been fool enough to dump her down amongst; the while he winced at idiosyncrasies he yet grudged to admit. No, the wider the distance he could put between himself and Buddlecombe the better he would be pleased. But where to go? . . . what next? Back to some sordid manufacturing town, with its black mud and slippery cobble-stones, to act as medical adviser to a handful of grooms and servant girls? Or to another village to see exclusive country-folk turn up their noses at your wife, and watch the practice in which you had invested your hard-earned hundreds melting away, filched by one whose chief merit was never having been out of England? Not if he knew it! �� There now remained only London to consider �� Mary would no doubt harp anew on the openings to be found there. But at the mere thought of London he shrank into himself, as he had shrunk under his first physical impression of it. What he had then suspected he now felt sure of. Great cities were not for him: he was too old to stand the strain of their wear and tear. And therewith the list of possibilities on this side of the globe was exhausted. Would he had stayed on the other! CIVIS BRITANNICUS SUM�� that knowledge should have been enough for him. Instead of which, burning to prove his citizenship, he had chased back, with, in his heart, the pent-up feelings of his long, long absence. He laughed did he now recall the exultation with which he had descried the outlines of the English coast. ��Out there,�� he had seen this old country through the rose-red spectacles of youthful memory. Now he knew that the thrill he had experienced on again beholding it �� his pleasure in its radiant greenness �� was the sum total of the satisfaction he would ever get from it. No sooner ashore �� and not even Mary had fathomed his passionate desire to stand well here �� than he had felt himself outsider and alien. England had no welcome for her homing sons, or any need of them: their places were long since filled.

��My poor, dear Lizzie! Do believe me, he only wanted to spare you . . . as long as he could. Consider him now, and his sufferings, and don��t make it harder for him than you can help. Think, too, of your baby.��

She and Hempel were staying in lodgings at Fitzroy, prior to setting out on the forlorn hope of a sea voyage. For, after numerous breakdowns, poor Hempel �� he looked as if the first puff of wind would blow him overboard; Richard called him: ��The next candidate for the Resurrection!���� had been obliged definitely to abandon his pastorate. In the meantime he was resting in bed from the fatigues of the train journey, before undertaking the fresh fatigues to which Zara, in her wilful blindness, condemned him.