onour of calling on you--I
shall see you again, Ethel.

And off he went over the glazy stones to his own house, Ethel knowing
that this cordial salutation and intended call were meant to be
honourable amends for his suspicions; but Leonard, unconscious of the
import, and scarcely knowing indeed that he was addressed, made his
mechanical gesture of respect, and looked up, down, and round, absorbed
in the scene. 'How exactly the same it all looks,' he said; 'the
cloister gate, and the Swan, and the postman in the very same
waterproof cape.'

'Do you not feel like being just awake?'

'No; it is more like being a ghost, or somebody else.'

Then the wind drove them on too fast for speech, till as they crossed
the High Street, Ethel pointed through the plane-trees to two round
black eyes, and a shining black nose, at the dining-room window.

'My Mab, my poor little Mab!--You have kept her all this time! I was
afraid to ask for her. I could not hope it.'

'I could not get my spoilt child, Gertrude, to bed without taking Mab,
that she might see the meeting.'

Perhaps it served Daisy right that the meeting did not answer her
expectations. Mab and her master had both grown older; she smelt round
him long before she was sure of him, and then their content in one
another was less shown by fervent rapture, than by the quiet hand
smoothing her silken coat; and, in return, by her wistful eye, nestling
gesture, gently waving tail.

And Leonard! How was it with him? It was not easy to tell in his
absolute passiveness. He seemed to have neither will nor impulse to
speak, move, or act, though whatever was desired of him, he did with
the implicit obedience that no one could bear to see. They put books
near him, but he did not voluntarily touch one: they asked if he would
write to his sister, and he took the pen in his hand, but did not
accomplish a commencement. Ethel asked him if he were tired, or had a
headache.

'Thank you, no,' he said; 'I'll write,' and made a dip in the ink.

'I did not mean to tease you,' she said; 'the mail is not going just
yet, and there is no need for haste. I was only afraid something was
wrong.'

'Thank you,' he said, submissively; 'I will--when I can think; but it
is all too strange. I have not seen a lady, nor a room like this,
since July three years.'

After that Ethel let him alone, satisfied that peace was the best means
of recovering the exhaustion of his long-suffering.

The