It was in such a mood that she leaned, one evening, on the railing of the old veranda, vaguely musing and inclined to sadness. There was no certainty as to the hour of Lance's advent, for he had not named a time, and into that far-off nook where she lived the lightning of the telegraph never penetrated. But of late Jessie had adopted a custom of straying out upon the veranda, as if she expected to see Lance approaching.
Suddenly she heard the click and crunch of unwonted wheels upon the drive near the house. She started up and listened, in a tremor of incredulous delight. The sounds drew nearer; presently a light flashed across the moist branches of the shade-trees, and the next moment she beheld the lanterns of a carriage, dimly illuminating its battered varnish, the smoking backs of two horses and the muffled torso of a sable driver. Then Lance's young, energetic face appeared in the square of the carriage-door, faintly roseate with the light from the house. He was fumbling at the door-handle before the wheels stopped turning.
The sable driver subsided completely into the depths of his sableness, as the two figures clasped each other at the top of the steps.
"Ah, Ned, I have waited for you so long!"
"And so have I for you, dear."
"Do you know, I felt almost as if I were that poor Gertrude, waiting and waiting still?"
"You are, dearest—you are my Gertrude!"
And then the colonel, always discreet, allowed himself to be seen in the hallway, prepared to welcome the wanderer.
Lance barely restrained himself until the next day before seeking an opportunity to tell Jessie about the drawing which Hedson had brought from England.
"You've written me next to nothing about Adela Reefe," he said to her. "But I suppose you have kept on taking charge of her letters for Dennie."