camp, lately pitched on a common beyond
Hay, was consequently deferred. Some of the gentlemen were gone to the
stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were playing
billiards in the billiard-room. The dowagers Ingram and Lynn sought
solace in a quiet game at cards. Blanche Ingram, after having repelled,
by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to
draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental
tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the
library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and
prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of
absence. The room and the house were silent: only now and then the
merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.

It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the
hour to dress for dinner, when little Adele, who knelt by me in the
drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed--

"Voila, Monsieur Rochester, qui revient!"

I turned, and Miss Ingram darted forwards from her sofa: the others, too,
looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a
crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible
on the wet gravel. A post-chaise was approaching.

"What can possess him to come home in that style?" said Miss Ingram. "He
rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and Pilot
was with him:--what has he done with the animals?"

As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so
near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking
of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when
she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement. The
post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman
alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Rochester; it was
a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.

"How provoking!" exclaimed Miss Ingram: "you tiresome monkey!"
(apostrophising Adele), "who perched you up in the window to give false
intelligence?" and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault.

Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered.
He bowed to Lady Ingram, as deeming her the eldest lady present.

"It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam," said he, "when my
friend, Mr. Rochester, is from home; but I arrive from a very long
journey, and