I am not sure that she knew him at the first glance. Poor child, her heart was too deeply preoccupied to do more than flutter feebly at the sight of him, and no secondary thought as to how he had come here, or what unlooked-for circumstance had brought him back, was within the range of her intelligence. Edward Wodehouse made no more than a momentary pause ere he decided what to do. He slipped a coin into the porter’s ready hand, and gave him directions about his luggage. “Keep it safe till I return; don’t send it home. I am obliged to go to town for an hour or two,” he said, and sprang again into the carriage he had just left. His heart was beating with no feeble flutter. He had the promptitude of a man who knows that no opportunity ought to be neglected. The door closed upon them with that familiar bang which we all know so well; the engine shrieked, the wheels jarred, and Rose Damerel and Edward Wodehouse--two people whom even the Imperial Government of England had been moved to separate--moved away into the distance, as if they had eloped with each other, sitting face to face. Her heart fluttered feebly enough--his heart as strong as the pulsations of the steam-engine, and he thought almost as audible; but the first moment was one of embarrassment. “I cannot get over the wonder of this meeting,” he said. “Miss Damerel, what happy chance takes you to London this morning of all others? Some fairy must have done it for me?” “No happy chance at all,” said Rose, shivering with painful emotion, and drawing her shawl closer round her. What could she say to him?--but she began to realize that it was _him_, which was the strangest, bewildering sensation. As for him, knowing of no mystery and no misery, the tender sympathy in his face grew deeper and deeper. Could it be poverty? could she be going to work like any other poor girl? A great throb of love and pity went through the young man’s heart. “Don’t be angry with me,” he said; “but I cannot see you here, alone and looking sad--and take no interest. Can you tell me what it is? Can you make any use of me? Miss Damerel, don’t you know there is nothing in the world that would make me so happy as to be of service to you?” “Have you just come home?” she asked. “This morning; I was on my way from Portsmouth. And you--won’t you tell me something about yourself?” Rose made a tremendous effort to go back to the ordinary regions of talk; and then she recollected all that had happened since he had been away. “You know that papa died,” she said, the tears springing to her eyes with an effort of nature which relieved her brain and heart. “I heard that: I was very, very sorry.” “And then for a time we were very poor; but now we are well off again by the death of mamma’s uncle Ernest; that is all, I think,” she said, with an attempt at a smile.