a mere dead wall, a lapse
of logic, a confirmed bewilderment. And moreover, above all,
nothing mattered, in the relation of the enclosing scene to his own
consciousness, but its very most direct bearings.

Lady Castledean's dream of Mr. Blint for the morning was doubtless
already, with all the spacious harmonies re-established, taking the
form of "going over" something with him, at the piano, in one of the
numerous smaller rooms that were consecrated to the less gregarious
uses; what she had wished had been effected--her convenience had
been assured. This made him, however, wonder the more where Charlotte
was--since he didn't at all suppose her to be making a tactless third,
which would be to have accepted mere spectatorship, in the duet of their
companions. The upshot of everything for him, alike of the less and of
the more, was that the exquisite day bloomed there like a large fragrant
flower that he had only to gather. But it was to Charlotte he wished
to make the offering, and as he moved along the terrace, which rendered
visible parts of two sides of the house, he looked up at all the windows
that were open to the April morning, and wondered which of them would
represent his friend's room. It befell thus that his question, after
no long time, was answered; he saw Charlotte appear above as if she had
been called by the pausing of his feet on the flags. She had come to the
sill, on which she leaned to look down, and she remained there a minute
smiling at him. He had been immediately struck with her wearing a hat
and a jacket--which conduced to her appearance of readiness not so much
to join him, with a beautiful uncovered head and a parasol, where he
stood, as to take with him some larger step altogether. The larger step
had been, since the evening before, intensely in his own mind, though
he had not fully thought out, even yet, the slightly difficult detail of
it; but he had had no chance, such as he needed, to speak the definite
word to her, and the face she now showed affected him, accordingly, as
a notice that she had wonderfully guessed it for herself. They had these
identities of impulse--they had had them repeatedly before; and if such
unarranged but unerring encounters gave the measure of the degree in
which people were, in the common phrase, meant for each other, no union
in the world had ever been more sweetened with rightness. What in fact
most often happened was that her rightness went, as who should say,