that response.  She grew impatient and restless, and called at the chief Post Office in Bursley for information about the American mails.  On this evening, as Leonora sat in the garden, Milly was reciting at a concert at Knype, and Ethel and Fred had accompanied her.  Leonora, resisting some pressure, had declined to go with them.  Assuming that Arthur wrote on the day he received her missive, his reply, she had ascertained, ought to be delivered in Hillport the next morning, but there was just a chance that it might be delivered that night.  Hence she had stayed at home, expectant, and—­with all her serenity—­a little nervous and excited.

Carpenter emerged from the region of the stable and began to water some flower-beds in the vicinity of her seat.

‘Terrible dry month we’ve had, ma’am,’ he murmured in his quiet pastoral voice, waving the can to and fro.

She agreed perfunctorily.  Her mind was divided between suspense concerning the postman, contemplation of the placid vista of the remainder of her career, and pleasure in the languorous charm of the May evening.

Bran moved his head, and rising ponderously walked round the seat towards the house.  Then Carpenter, following the dog with his eyes, smiled and touched his cap.  Leonora turned sharply.  Arthur Twemlow himself stood on the step of the drawing-room window, and Bessie’s white apron was just disappearing within.

In the first glance Leonora noticed that Arthur was considerably thinner.  She was overcome by a violent emotion that contained both fear and joy.  And as he approached her, agitated and unsmiling, the joy said:  ‘How heavenly it is to see him again!’ But the fear asked:  ’Why is he so worn?  What have you been doing to him all these months, Leonora?’ She met him in the middle of the lawn, and they shook hands timidly, clumsily, embarrassed.  Carpenter, with that inborn delicacy of tact which is the mark of a simple soul, walked away out of sight, and Bran, receiving no attention, followed him.

‘Were you surprised to see me?’ Arthur lamely questioned.

In their hearts a thousand sensations struggled, some for expression, others for concealment; and speech, pathetically unequal to the swift crisis, was disconcerted by it almost to the verge of impotence.

‘Yes,’ she said.  ‘Very.’

‘You ought not to have been,’ he replied.

His tone alarmed her.  ‘Why?’ she said.  ‘When did you get my letter?’

‘Just after one o’clock to-day.’

‘To-day?’

‘I was in London.  It was sent on to me from New York.’

She was relieved.  When she saw him first at the window, she had a lightning vision of him tearing open her letter in New York, jumping instantly into a cab, and boarding the English steamer.  This had frightened her.  It was, if not exactly reassuring, at any rate less terrifying, to learn that he had flown to her only from London.