his letter in a few hours.  We sent the covered carriage to meet the train indicated, and waited like two newly strung harps for the first sound of the returning wheels.  At last we heard them on the gravel; and the question arose who was to receive him.  It was, strictly speaking, my duty; but I felt timid; I could not help shirking it, and insisted that Caroline should go down.  She did not, however, go near the door as she usually does when anybody is expected, but waited palpitating in the drawing-room.  He little thought when he saw the silent hall, and the apparently deserted house, how that house was at the very same moment alive and throbbing with interest under the surface.  I stood at the back of the upper landing, where nobody could see me from downstairs, and heard him walk across the hall—­a lighter step than my father’s—­and heard him then go into the drawing-room, and the servant shut the door behind him and go away.

What a pretty lover’s meeting they must have had in there all to themselves!  Caroline’s sweet face looking up from her black gown—­how it must have touched him.  I know she wept very much, for I heard her; and her eyes will be red afterwards, and no wonder, poor dear, though she is no doubt happy.  I can imagine what she is telling him while I write this—­her fears lest anything should have happened to prevent his coming after all—­gentle, smiling reproaches for his long delay; and things of that sort.  His two portmanteaus are at this moment crossing the landing on the way to his room.  I wonder if I ought to go down.

A little later.—­I have seen him!  It was not at all in the way that I intended to encounter him, and I am vexed.  Just after his portmanteaus were brought up I went out from my room to descend, when, at the moment of stepping towards the first stair, my eyes were caught by an object in the hall below, and I paused for an instant, till I saw that it was a bundle of canvas and sticks, composing a sketching tent and easel.  At the same nick of time the drawing-room door opened and the affianced pair came out.  They were saying they would go into the garden; and he waited a moment while she put on her hat.  My idea was to let them pass on without seeing me, since they seemed not to want my company, but I had got too far on the landing to retreat; he looked up, and stood staring at me—­engrossed to a dream-like fixity.  Thereupon I, too, instead of advancing as I ought to have done, stood moonstruck and awkward, and before I could gather my weak senses sufficiently to descend, she had called him, and they went out by the garden door together.  I then thought of following them, but have changed my mind, and come here to jot down these few lines.  It is all I am fit for . . .

He is even more handsome than I expected.  I was right in feeling he must have an attraction beyond that of form:  it appeared even in that momentary glance.  How happy Caroline ought to be.  But I must, of course, go down to be ready with tea in the drawing-room by the time they come indoors.