‘Sick of you? That’s very likely! Why, it’s like old times to see your face again! What jolly days we will have together! I am so glad you came before the fine weather was over. Isn’t it a lovely place! And where are you staying, Charlie?’ In the gladness of my heart at meeting the boy again, I had been holding his hands all this time; but now, perceiving that Mr. Charteris was lounging in one of the window-seats, smoking, and regarding my ebullitions of delight, as I thought, with rather a contemptuous air, I dropped them as if they had been hot coals, and sat down on a chair close by. ‘I have put up at the Hôtel d’Etoile,’ said Charlie. His pronunciation was delicious—something to make one scream by-and-by; but at that moment he might have stood on his head, and I should have regarded him gravely, so eager was I for news from my dear old home. ‘That is all right. I am glad you have chosen the Etoile. It is nearer us than the Cloche. Fancy, I was just writing a letter to your dear mother, and thinking so much of you, Charlie, and all the others, when they knocked at my door to tell me you were here! I suppose you have been introduced to Miss Lovett?’ ‘Yes, Mr. Charteris was good enough to do so. I was surprised to see Charteris here, too, Hilda. It is quite a meeting of the clans! What an age it seems since he was at Norwood!’ Then I remembered that these two must have met at that period, though Charlie had been such a mere lad, that Mr. Charteris and I had doubtless considered that he had neither eyes nor ears. The recollection, however, of what I had told him of my early disappointment came back so vividly upon my mind, that I flushed scarlet and hated myself for so flushing, for fear lest the one man should interpret my change of countenance as regret for our lost intimacy, and the other accept it as a clue to the mysterious history I had partly confided to him. But Charlie appeared to see no connection at all in the two circumstances. ‘Mr. Charteris had quite forgotten me,’ he went on, ‘but I suppose that is not surprising. Hair upon one’s face makes such a difference.’ (Charlie’s moustaches resembled the down on an apple-tart, and had to be caught sideways to be seen at all.) ‘But I knew him at once. He is not the least altered since he was at Norwood. Is he, Hilda?’ ‘Men alter less at Mr. Charteris’s age than they do at yours, Charlie. But tell me about your mother, and your brothers and sisters. I wish you could have brought your dear mother with you. And how are Nellie and Connie and Flo and little Bell? It seems years instead of months since I saw them all.’ ‘Oh, they’re flourishing, Hilda, and going on just as usual. Nell’s been worrying mother ever since you left to send her to a continental school, but I don’t think she’ll get her way. Mother’s much too timid to let any one of them out of her sight.’