oking again
at the newspaper he found it to be one that was sent him long ago, and
had been carelessly thrown aside. But for an accidental overhauling of
the waste journals in his study he might not have known of the event for
years. At this moment of reading the Duke had already been dead seven
months. Alwyn could now no longer bind himself down to machine-made
synecdoche, antithesis, and climax, being full of spontaneous specimens
of all these rhetorical forms, which he dared not utter. Who shall
wonder that his mind luxuriated in dreams of a sweet possibility now laid
open for the first time these many years? for Emmeline was to him now as
ever the one dear thing in all the world. The issue of his silent
romancing was that he resolved to return to her at the very earliest
moment.

But he could not abandon his professional work on the instant. He did
not get really quite free from engagements till four months later; but,
though suffering throes of impatience continually, he said to himself
every day: 'If she has continued to love me nine years she will love me
ten; she will think the more tenderly of me when her present hours of
solitude shall have done their proper work; old times will revive with
the cessation of her recent experience, and every day will favour my
return.'

The enforced interval soon passed, and he duly arrived in England,
reaching the village of Batton on a certain winter day between twelve and
thirteen months subsequent to the time of the Duke's death.

It was evening; yet such was Alwyn's impatience that he could not forbear
taking, this very night, one look at the castle which Emmeline had
entered as unhappy mistress ten years before. He threaded the park
trees, gazed in passing at well-known outlines which rose against the dim
sky, and was soon interested in observing that lively country-people, in
parties of two and three, were walking before and behind him up the
interlaced avenue to the castle gateway. Knowing himself to be safe from
recognition, Alwyn inquired of one of these pedestrians what was going
on.

'Her Grace gives her tenantry a ball to-night, to keep up the old custom
of the Duke and his father before him, which she does not wish to
change.'

'Indeed. Has she lived here entirely alone since the Duke's death?'

'Quite alone. But though she doesn't receive company herself, she likes
the village people to enjoy themselves, and often has 'em here.'

'Kind-hearted,