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120 A warmer climate, an easier life, and great care might prolong his life for several years. He now regretted the great seclusion in which they had lived, for in case of his death Amy would be friendless. The non-acknowledgment of his letters announcing Lady Eveline's death to Mr. Derrick and her children, which he had felt at the time to be a discourtesy, was now a serious misfortune. The Countess-Dowager was dead; the Derricks were all estranged; his sister, Mrs. Evans, had never visited him during his wife's lifetime, and had come to see him once after her death to shew him that she had no quarrel with him, but that she had decidedly objected to have any intercourse with her. She had a large family and no great income, and she did not seem to take to Amy at all, so that she was not to be depended upon. With his publisher he had had only business relations, and his little work on Madeira, which he had tried to persuade Eveline would pay all their expenses, had not taken and did not sell. Gerald hesitated a long time as to which of two courses to pursue:—whether to make submission for Amy's sake to the Derricks, or to try, as his last chance to prolong his life, to leave England for Australia, where he was to act very differently from heretofore: where he must be sociable, brilliant, and