"Oh, Mr. Blake, do you suppose we'll know her when she lands?" eagerly inquired Miss McGregor. "I am dying to see what she is like!"
"Darcy's going on board after her," said Val, "you'll see him linking her up the wharf. I say, Laura, Bill told me you had a letter from Miss Rose."
"Why, yes, didn't you know? And she is coming back with Mrs. Wheatly, and I am so glad!"
"Have you been corresponding with Miss Rose all this time, Laura?" inquired Miss Clowrie.
"No; this is the first letter I have received. I sent her the 'Spouter,' containing Nathalie Marsh's death, to Quebec, and she wrote back in reply. This is all I have heard of her until now. She says she has had scarcely a moment to herself."
"Do you know, Laura," said Miss McGregor, "I used to think she was half in love with Charley Marsh before that terrible affair of his. He was a handsome fellow, and she must have seen a great deal of him, living in the same house."
"One might fall in love with Charley without living in the same house with him, mightn't they, Catty?" asked Mr. Blake, with a grin; "but it's all nonsense in saying the little school-mistress cared about him. She was too much of a saint to fall in love with any one."
"There's the boat!" cried Captain Cavendish; "coming round Paradise Island!"
"And there goes Darcy down the floats," echoed Val. "Watch well, ladies, and you will behold the heiress of Redmon in a jiffy."
The steamer swept around the island and floated gracefully up the harbor. In twenty minutes she was at the wharf; a little army of cabmen, armed with whips, stood ready, as if to thrash the passengers as they came up. A couple of M. P.'s, brass-buttoned, blue-coated, and red-batoned, stood keeping order among the rabble of boys, ready to tear each other's eyes out for the privilege of carrying somebody's luggage. Our party flocked to the edge of the high wharf overlooking the floats, up which the travelers must come, and strained their necks and eyes to catch sight of the heiress. Mr. Darcy had gone on board the first moment he could, and the passengers were flocking out and up the floats. Some of them, who had been to Speckport before, or had heard from others that it was one of the institutions of the place for the population of the town to flock down on such occasions, passed on indifferently; but others, more ignorant, looked, up in amazement, and wondered if all those people expected friends. Most of the passengers had gone, when there was an exclamation from more than one mouth of "Here she is!" "There's the heiress with Mr. Darcy!" "Look, she's coming!" and all bent forward more eagerly than before. Yes, Mr. Darcy was slowly ascending the floats with a lady on his arm, a tall lady, very slender and graceful of figure, wearing a black silk dress, a black cloth mantle trimmed with purple, a plain dark traveling bonnet, and a thick brown vail. The vail defied penetration—the eyes of Argus himself could not have discovered the face behind it.