sweet face was turned
eagerly towards the windows of the train, and with a rush of pain and
joy the traveller recognised the friend of her girlhood. The two women
kissed, and clung, and gazed, and fell back to gaze again. On
Dorothea's face was written love and admiration, touched with the
wistfulness of the exile. This young, fresh girl was only a year her
junior--how sweet, how pink, how _English_ she appeared! The sight of
her was as a breath of green lanes sunk deep between flowering hedges.
Katrine's eyes felt the smart of tears. How thin, how old, how changed,
but oh, how sweet! sweeter than ever, and with just the old, dear,
loving ways. As for Jack Middleton himself, he had improved in
appearance, as men have a trying habit of doing, in contradistinction to
their women kind. He looked broader, more imposing, the loss of
complexion was in his case little detriment. When he had left England
he had been but a lanky youth, now he was a man, and a handsome man at
that. Katrine looking on felt a pang of resentment. This land of exile
demanded many tolls of the women who followed their men-kind to its
shores, not least among them the loss of youth and bloom! Captain
Middleton took charge of Mrs Mannering, and the two friends drove home
together, hand in hand, but silent. There was so much to be said that
it seemed difficult to begin, and Katrine was subtly conscious that
Dorothea shared her own feeling of shyness and strain. Three days had
passed since Bedford's return, the story of the wreck had been told--how
much, how little, had Dorothea divined? Each moment Katrine braced
herself to hear a name--_two_ names; when time passed on without mention
of either, the silence but added to her strain.

At each turn of the dusty path she glanced ahead with shrinking eyes,
each bungalow held a possibility, a dread. Did _he_ live there? Was he
perhaps even now looking out from behind those shrouding-blinds? And of
what was Dorothea thinking as she sat so silently by her side? The look
in her sweet, tired eyes, the clinging touch of the thin hand were so
eloquent of love that Katrine's heart could not but be content with her
welcome, but her thoughts were awhirl.

It was a relief to both women when the bungalow was reached, and the
appearance of the small son set their tongues free. Dorothea flushed
with pride as she listened to her friend's appreciation of her son's
beauty and charm, and the urchin, scentin