tairs, in
solitary state. The sunset is burning redly on the wilderness of trees
that I see from my window, and I am poring over my journal again, to
calm my impatience for the return of the travellers. They ought to have
arrived, by my calculations, before this. How still and lonely the
house is in the drowsy evening quiet! Oh me! how many minutes more
before I hear the carriage wheels and run downstairs to find myself in
Laura's arms?

The poor little dog! I wish my first day at Blackwater Park had not
been associated with death, though it is only the death of a stray
animal.

Welmingham--I see, on looking back through these private pages of mine,
that Welmingham is the name of the place where Mrs. Catherick lives.
Her note is still in my possession, the note in answer to that letter
about her unhappy daughter which Sir Percival obliged me to write. One
of these days, when I can find a safe opportunity, I will take the note
with me by way of introduction, and try what I can make of Mrs.
Catherick at a personal interview. I don't understand her wishing to
conceal her visit to this place from Sir Percival's knowledge, and I
don't feel half so sure, as the housekeeper seems to do, that her
daughter Anne is not in the neighbourhood after all. What would Walter
Hartright have said in this emergency? Poor, dear Hartright! I am
beginning to feel the want of his honest advice and his willing help
already.

Surely I heard something. Was it a bustle of footsteps below stairs?
Yes! I hear the horses' feet--I hear the rolling wheels----

II

June 15th.--The confusion of their arrival has had time to subside.
Two days have elapsed since the return of the travellers, and that
interval has sufficed to put the new machinery of our lives at
Blackwater Park in fair working order. I may now return to my journal,
with some little chance of being able to continue the entries in it as
collectedly as usual.

I think I must begin by putting down an odd remark which has suggested
itself to me since Laura came back.

When two members of a family or two intimate friends are separated, and
one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or
friend who has been travelling always seems to place the relative or
friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage when the
two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new
habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and