d the general elevation of
both, struck him forcibly the first evening. His earliest thought the
next morning was of some great event having taken place; and when he
left Mr Grey's door after dinner, it was with an unwillingness which
made him spur himself and his horse on to their business, that he might
the sooner return to his new-found pleasure. His thoughts already
darted forward to the time when the Miss Ibbotsons would be leaving
Deerbrook. It was already a heavy thought how dull Deerbrook would be
without them. He was already unconsciously looking at every object in
and around the familiar place with the eyes of the strangers,
speculating on how the whole would appear to them. In short, his mind
was full of them. There are, perhaps, none who do not know what this
kind of impression is. All have felt it, at some time or other,--many
have felt it often,--about strangers whom they have been predisposed to
like, or with whom they have been struck at meeting. Nine times out of
ten, perhaps, the impression is fleeting; and when it is gone, there is
an unwillingness to return to it, from a sense of absurdity in having
been so much interested about one who so soon became indifferent: but
the fact is not the less real and general for this. When it happens
between two young people who are previously fancy-free, and
circumstances favour the impression till it sinks deeper than the fancy,
it takes the name of love at first sight. Otherwise it passes away
without a name, without a record:--for the hour it is a secret: in an
after time it is forgotten.

Possessed unconsciously with this secret, Hope threw himself from his
horse at the entrance of the meadow where the cowslip-gatherers were
busy, fastened his steed to the gate, and joined the party. The
children ran to him with the gleanings of intelligence which they had
acquired since he saw them last, half an hour before:--that it was well
they did not put off their gathering any longer, for some of the flowers
were beginning to dry up already: that cousins had never tasted
cowslip-tea;--(was not this _very_ odd?)--that cousin Hester would not
help to pick the flowers for drying,--she thought it such a pity to pull
the blossom out of the calyx: that Sophia would not help either, because
it was warm: that cousin Margaret had gathered a great many, but she had
been ever so long watching a spider's nest,--a nasty large spider's nest
that Matilda was just going to br