Yet now she never saw her.

It was two years since they parted; the school was broken up; her idol had gone to India to join a widowed brother.

It was all over--for ever.

Those precious letters had worn themselves away; so, too, had Marcella's religious feelings; she was once more another being.
* * * * * But these two years since she had said good-bye to Solesby and her school days?
Once set thinking of bygones by the stimulus of Mellor and its novelty, Marcella must needs think, too, of her London life, of all that it had opened to her, and meant for her.

Fresh agitations!--fresh passions!--but this time impersonal, passions of the mind and sympathies.
At the time she left Solesby her father and mother were abroad, and it was apparently not convenient that she should join them.