"It is rather sudden, surely!"
"Oh, I don't think so. By the bye, mamma, shall we not soon feel a little dull if we are here all alone? It would be very nice to fill the house with guests and have a little gaiety. Perhaps—" with a faint but charming blush—"Lord Southbourne would come if he were asked."
Lord Southbourne was an exceptionable viscount with weak brains and a large rent-roll whom Margaret had refused six months before.
"I am sure he would, my darling; I will ask him," said Lady Caroline, with great satisfaction. And she noticed that Margaret's watch for an unknown visitor had now come to its natural end.
It was not more than a month later in the year when Janetta Colwyn, walking in the plantation near the Red House, came face to face with a man who was leaning against the trunk of a fir-tree, and had been waiting for her to approach. She looked astonished; but he was calm, though he smiled with pleasure, and held out his hands.
"Well, Janetta!"
"Wyvis! You have come home at last!"
"At last."
"You have not been up to the house yet?"
"No, I was standing here wishing that I could see you first of all; and, just as I wished it, you came in sight. I take it as a good omen."