ions would have been perfect if they had not caused Madeleine
and poor old Tanty unnecessary grief.

But now that I know the truth, I cannot distinctly remember what it
was that I _did_ expect to find on that island.

If it had not been that I had already gone through more excitement
than I bargained for to reach that mysterious rock, how exciting I
should have found it to wander up to unknown ruins, to knock at the
closed doors of an enchanted castle, ascend unknown stairs and engage
in devious unknown passages--all the while on the tiptoe of
expectation!

But when I dragged myself giddy and faint from the boiling breakers
and scrambled upon the desolate island under the rain that beat me
like the lashes of a whip, pushing against a wind that bellowed and
rushed as though determined to thrust me back to the waters I had
cheated of their prey, my only thoughts were for succour and shelter.

Such warm shelter, such loving welcome, it was of course impossible
that I could for a moment have anticipated!

Conceive, my dear diary, the feelings of a poor, semi-drowned
wanderer, shivering with cold, with feet torn by cruel stones, who
suddenly emerges from howl and turmoil into a warm, quiet room to be
received as a long and eagerly expected guest, whose advent brings
happiness, whose presence is a highly prized favour; in fact not as
one who has to explain her intrusion, but as one who in the situation
holds the upper hand herself.

And _this_ was my welcome from him whose absence from Pulwick was more
haunting than any presence I can think of!

Of course I knew him at once. Even had I not expected to see him--had
I not come to seek him in fact--I should have known him at once from
the portrait whose melancholy, wide-open eyes had followed me about
the gallery. But I had not dreamed to see him so little altered. Now,
apart from the dress, if he is in any way changed from the picture, it
is in a look of greater youth and less sombreness. The portrait is
handsome, but the original is better.

Had it not been so, I imagine I might have felt vastly different when
I was seized and enfolded and--kissed! As it was I cannot remember
that, even at the moment of this extraordinary proceeding, I was
otherwise than pleased, nor that the dark hints of Mr. Landale
concerning Sir Adrian's madness returned to disturb my mind in the
least.

And yet I found myself enveloped in great strong arms out of which I
could not have extrica