‘No, Sir,’ said Anne; ’there is no message.  You are misin—­the Admiral is misinformed.  I do justice to the kindness of his intentions, but he is quite mistaken.  There is no truth in any such report.’

He was a moment silent.  She turned her eyes towards him for the first time since his re-entering the room.  His colour was varying, and he was looking at her with all the power and keenness which she believed no other eyes than his possessed.

‘No truth in any such report?’ he repeated.  ’No truth in any part of it?’

‘None.’

He had been standing by a chair, enjoying the relief of leaning on it, or of playing with it.  He now sat down, drew it a little nearer to her, and looked with an expression which had something more than penetration in it—­something softer.  Her countenance did not discourage.  It was a silent but a very powerful dialogue; on his supplication, on hers acceptance.  Still a little nearer, and a hand taken and pressed; and ‘Anne, my own dear Anne!’ bursting forth in all the fulness of exquisite feeling,—­and all suspense and indecision were over.  They were re-united.  They were restored to all that had been lost.  They were carried back to the past with only an increase of attachment and confidence, and only such a flutter of present delight as made them little fit for the interruption of Mrs. Croft when she joined them not long afterwards. She, probably, in the observations of the next ten minutes saw something to suspect; and though it was hardly possible for a woman of her description to wish the mantua-maker had imprisoned her longer, she might be very likely wishing for some excuse to run about the house, some storm to break the windows above, or a summons to the Admiral’s shoemaker below.  Fortune favoured them all, however, in another way, in a gentle, steady rain, just happily set in as the Admiral returned and Anne rose to go.  She was earnestly invited to stay dinner.  A note was despatched to Camden Place, and she staid—­staid till ten at night; and during that time the husband and wife, either by the wife’s contrivance, or by simply going on in their usual way, were frequently out of the room together—­gone upstairs to hear a noise, or downstairs to settle their accounts, or upon the landing to trim the lamp.  And these precious moments were turned to so good an account that all the most anxious feelings of the past were gone through.  Before they parted at night, Anne had the felicity of being assured that in the first place (so far from being altered for the worse), she had gained inexpressibly in personal loveliness; and that as to character, hers was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the just medium of fortitude and gentleness—­that he had never ceased to love and prefer her, though it had been only at Uppercross that he had learnt to do her justice, and only at Lyme that he had begun to understand his own feelings; that at Lyme he had received lessons