his mind is bent
upon the causes of events rather than their progress. As you see me on
the page now, I stand somewhere between the two, approximating to
the former, but with sufficient of the latter within me to tame the
delightful expansiveness proper to that coming hour of marriage-bells
and bridal-wreaths. It is a sign that the end, and the delivery of
reader and writer alike, should not be dallied with.

The princess had invited Lucy Heddon to Sarkeld to meet Temple,
and Temple to meet me. Onward I flew. I saw the old woods of the
lake-palace, and, as it were, the light of my past passion waning
above them. I was greeted by the lady of all nobility with her gracious
warmth, and in his usual abrupt manful fashion by Prince Hermann. And
I had no time to reflect on the strangeness of my stepping freely under
the roof where a husband claimed Ottilia, before she led me into the
library, where sat my lost and recovered, my darling; and, unlike
herself, for a moment, she faltered in rising and breathing my name.

We were alone. I knew she was no bondwoman. The question how it had
come to pass lurked behind everything I said and did; speculation on
the visible features, and touching of the unfettered hand, restrained me
from uttering or caring to utter it. But it was wonderful. It thrust me
back on Providence again for the explanation--humbly this time. It was
wonderful and blessed, as to loving eyes the first-drawn breath of a
drowned creature restored to life. I kissed her hand. 'Wait till you
have heard everything, Harry,' she said, and her voice was deeper,
softer, exquisitely strange in its known tones, as her manner was, and
her eyes. She was not the blooming, straight-shouldered, high-breathing
girl of other days, but sister to the day of her 'Good-bye, Harry,' pale
and worn. The eyes had wept. This was Janet, haply widowed. She wore
no garb nor a shade of widowhood. Perhaps she had thrown it off, not to
offend an implacable temper in me. I said, 'I shall hear nothing that
can make you other than my own Janet--if you will?'

She smiled a little. 'We expected Temple's arrival sooner than yours,
Harry!'

'Do you take to his Lucy?'

'Yes, thoroughly.'

The perfect ring of Janet was there.

Mention of Riversley made her conversation lively, and she gave me
moderately good news of my father, quaint, out of Julia Bulsted's latest
letter to her.

'Then how long,' I asked astonished, 'how long have you been stayi