vanced
uncertainly: she knew who it was; there was only one stranger likely to
appear just now. It must be Anna Forrest. But it was so odd to find
her there, just when she had been thinking of her so much, that for a
moment she hardly knew what to say.

The girl, however, was quite at her ease.

"I am Anna Forrest," she said; "Mrs Hunt asked me to come in--she went
to find you. You are Delia, are you not?"

She had a bright, frank manner, with an entire absence of shyness, which
attracted Delia immediately. She found, on inquiry, that Mrs Hunt had
met Anna in the town with her aunt, and had asked her to come in. Mrs
Forrest had driven home, and Anna was to walk back after tea.

"And have you been waiting long?" asked Delia.

"It must have been an hour, I think," said Anna, "because I heard the
church clock. But it hasn't seemed long," she added, hastily; "I've
been looking out at the pigeons in the garden."

Delia felt no doubt whatever that Mrs Hunt had been called off in some
other direction, and had completely forgotten her guest. However, here
was Anna at last.

"Come up-stairs and take off your hat in my room," she said.

Delia's room was at the top of the house--a garret with a window looking
across the red-tiled roofs of the town to the distant meadows, through
which glistened the crooked silver line of the river Dorn. She was fond
of standing at this window in her few idle moments, with her arms
crossed on the high ledge, and her gaze directed far-away: to it were
confided all the hopes, and wishes, and dreams, which were, as a rule,
carefully locked up in her own breast, and of which only one person in
Dornton even guessed the existence.

Anna glanced curiously round as she entered. The room had rather a bare
look, after the bright prettiness of Waverley, though it contained all
Delia's most cherished possessions--a shelf of books, a battered old
brown desk, her music-stand, and her violin.

"Oh," she exclaimed, as her eye fell on the last, "can you play the
violin? Will you play to me?"

Delia hesitated: she was not fond of playing to people who did not care
for music, though she was often obliged to do so; but Anna pressed her
so earnestly that she did not like to be ungracious, and, taking up her
violin, played a short German air, which she thought might please her
visitor.

Anna meanwhile paid more attention to her new acquaintance than to her
performance, and looked at her with gre