Springs quickened, summers sped their hurrying blooms, autumns hung scarlet flags in the coppice, winters fell and mantled glebe and moor. Yet the world did not forget.
There came an April day when the circumstance of a sudden shower set down from an open carriage at the porch of Newstead Abbey a slender girl of seventeen, who had been visiting at near-by Annesley.
Waiting, in the library, the passing of the rain, the visitor picked up a book from the table. It was “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.”
For a time she read with tranquil interest—then suddenly startled:
“Is thy face like thy mother’s, my fair child!
Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart?
When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled,
And then we parted,—not as now we part,
But with a hope.—”
She looked for the name of its author and paled. Thereafter she sat with parted lips and tremulous, long breathing. The master of the house entered to find an unknown guest reading in a singular rapt absorption.