"Oh, Paul!"
"I bought it a year ago, but have been busy with alterations and improvements, so only came to live here within the last few weeks. I was so tired of a wandering life, Leo; and though I had only the vaguest hope that you—but somehow hope never quite deserted me."
"Then the strangeness is on our part. That we should come to where you were!"
"You had really no suspicion, Leo?" He looked at her with laughter in his eyes. "Sue kept her own counsel well;" added Paul demurely.
He and Sue had been in communication from—from precisely the date at which he took up his residence at Mere Hall. He had left for Mere Hall the day after he last saw Sue in London.
"You saw Sue in London?" She could scarcely speak for astonishment.
"Several times. The Fosters, my brother and his wife, put me up to it. Your sister is good and kind and sensible—mine is both the first, but not exactly the last, bless her for it! Her very lack of what is commonly admired, proved my salvation. She first extracted the truth from me, and then went straight for Sue, and hammered it into her that there was no earthly reason why we two should not be made happy now. She could not endure to see my long face, she said;—and though I gathered that Sue was somewhat startled by her abruptness—for Charlotte is not famed for tact—eventually the two understood each other, and I was brought on to the stage."
"Was that," cried Leo, with a sudden flash of memory, "was that one day, oh, it must have been that day!—Sue was so odd and unlike herself. I wondered what could have excited her in a private view of rather stupid water-colours, and why she began all at once to say she longed for the country? Were you in the water-colour gallery?"
He was, and all was explained.
"Coo-coo," came the plaintive note of a dove from the leafy shades close by—but it cooed unheard. The streamlet splashed on unheeded. The sun went slowly down behind the mountain-tops unseen. And still they sat on....