Willoughby returned to his England after an absence of three years.  On a fair April morning, the last of the month, he drove along his park palings, and, by the luck of things, Laetitia was the first of his friends whom he met.  She was crossing from field to field with a band of school-children, gathering wild flowers for the morrow May-day.  He sprang to the ground and seized her hand.  “Laetitia Dale!” he said.  He panted.  “Your name is sweet English music!  And you are well?” The anxious question permitted him to read deeply in her eyes.  He found the man he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go, saying:  “I could not have prayed for a lovelier home-scene to welcome me than you and these children flower-gathering.  I don’t believe in chance.  It was decreed that we should meet.  Do not you think so?”

Laetitia breathed faintly of her gladness.

He begged her to distribute a gold coin among the little ones; asked for the names of some of them, and repeated:  “Mary, Susan, Charlotte—­only the Christian names, pray!  Well, my dears, you will bring your garlands to the Hall to-morrow morning; and mind, early! no slugabeds tomorrow; I suppose I am browned, Laetitia?” He smiled in apology for the foreign sun, and murmured with rapture:  “The green of this English country is unsurpassed.  It is wonderful.  Leave England and be baked, if you would appreciate it.  You can’t, unless you taste exile as I have done—­for how many years?  How many?”

“Three,” said Laetitia.

“Thirty!” said he.  “It seems to me that length.  At least, I am immensely older.  But looking at you, I could think it less than three.  You have not changed.  You are absolutely unchanged.  I am bound to hope so.  I shall see you soon.  I have much to talk of, much to tell you.  I shall hasten to call on your father.  I have specially to speak with him.  I—­what happiness this is, Laetitia!  But I must not forget I have a mother.  Adieu; for some hours—­not for many!”

He pressed her hand again.  He was gone.

She dismissed the children to their homes.  Plucking primroses was hard labour now—­a dusty business.  She could have wished that her planet had not descended to earth, his presence agitated her so; but his enthusiastic patriotism was like a shower that, in the Spring season of the year, sweeps against the hard-binding East and melts the air and brings out new colours, makes life flow; and her thoughts recurred in wonderment to the behaviour of Constantia Durham.  That was Laetitia’s manner of taking up her weakness once more.  She could almost have reviled the woman who had given this beneficent magician, this pathetic exile, of the aristocratic sunburned visage and deeply scrutinizing eyes, cause for grief.  How deeply his eyes could read!  The starveling of patience awoke to the idea of a feast.  The sense of hunger came with it, and hope came, and patience fled.  She would have rejected hope to keep patience nigh her; but surely it can not always be Winter! said her reasoning blood, and we must excuse her as best we can if she was assured, by her restored warmth that Willoughby came in the order of the revolving seasons, marking a long Winter past.  He had specially to speak with her father, he had said.  What could that mean?  What, but—­She dared not phrase it or view it.