d the globular trunk of the postmaster and
neutralized some of the effects of officiality. The time was well
chosen, but the inquiry threatened to prove fruitless: the postmaster had
never, to his knowledge, seen the writing before. Christopher was
turning away when a clerk in the background looked up and stated that
some young lady had brought a packet with such an address upon it into
the office two days earlier to get it stamped.

'Do you know her?' said Christopher.

'I have seen her about the neighbourhood. She goes by every morning; I
think she comes into the town from beyond the common, and returns again
between four and five in the afternoon.'

'What does she wear?'

'A white wool jacket with zigzags of black braid.'

Christopher left the post-office and went his way. Among his other
pupils there were two who lived at some distance from Sandbourne--one of
them in the direction indicated as that habitually taken by the young
person; and in the afternoon, as he returned homeward, Christopher
loitered and looked around. At first he could see nobody; but when about
a mile from the outskirts of the town he discerned a light spot ahead of
him, which actually turned out to be the jacket alluded to. In due time
he met the wearer face to face; she was not Ethelberta Petherwin--quite a
different sort of individual. He had long made up his mind that this
would be the case, yet he was in some indescribable way disappointed.

Of the two classes into which gentle young women naturally divide, those
who grow red at their weddings, and those who grow pale, the present one
belonged to the former class. She was an April-natured, pink-cheeked
girl, with eyes that would have made any jeweller in England think of his
trade--one who evidently took her day in the daytime, frequently caught
the early worm, and had little to do with yawns or candlelight. She came
and passed him; he fancied that her countenance changed. But one may
fancy anything, and the pair receded each from each without turning their
heads. He could not speak to her, plain and simple as she seemed.

It is rarely that a man who can be entered and made to throb by the
channel of his ears is not open to a similar attack through the channel
of his eyes--for many doors will admit to one mansion--allowance being
made for the readier capacity of chosen and practised organs. Hence the
beauties, concords, and eloquences of the female form were never without