It existed in Charlotte watching for
her father at the window, and yet so bound up was she in the
probabilities and present sequences of things that she still watched.
Now and then she made sure that she saw her father turn from the road
into the lawn, but the figure, to her horror, would remain standing
still in one place. It was simply a slender spruce which had seemed
to start out of a corner of the night with a semblance of life. Now
and then she actually did see a figure coming up the road,
approaching the entrance to the lawn, and her heart leaped up with
joy. She watched for it to enter, but that was the end. Whoever it
was, it had passed the house and gone farther up the road. Those were
the cruellest moments of any--the momentary revival of hope and then
the dashing it to the ground. By-and-by her eyes, strained with such
watching, began to actually deceive her. She saw, as she thought,
shadows, approach and enter the house. Several times she ran to the
door and opened it, and no one was there.

After she had gone out in the dining-room and seen that it was
eight-seventeen, the time when the train was due in Banbridge, she
watched for the train. She knew that she could hear the rush of the
train after it left the station; she could even catch a glimpse of
the rosy fire of the locomotive through the trees, since the track
was elevated. She therefore watched for that, but it was very late.
That was unmistakably a great solace for her. She actually had a
prayerful mood of thankfulness for the lateness of the train. It was
that much longer that she need not give up hope. There was a few
minutes that she felt quite easy. Suddenly she remembered how foolish
she had been to watch for her father, anyway, before she heard the
arrival of the train. She realized that her head was overstrained,
her reason failing her. "How could papa come before the train?" she
asked herself. But after a few minutes her fears reasserted
themselves. She watched for something inimical to appear crossing the
lawn instead of her father. And then she heard a train, and she felt
faint, but in a second she became aware that it was a long freight.
No passenger-train ever moved thus with the veritable chu-chu of the
children, the heavy panting of two engines. Then after that she
started again, for she heard a train, but it was as if she had been
let fall by some wanton hand from a cruel height, for that train was
clearly a fast express which did