She sighed as her thoughts recurred to the letter received to-day. Six months, or perhaps even a year, before he was to come back to her! Yet the letter had not been without hopefulness. He had the prospect of getting his next step before that year was over, and then his coming home would be a final return. He would be able to retire, and he would buy some land--a hundred acres or so--and breed horses--one of his youthful dreams--and do a little building, perhaps, to enlarge and beautify the Angler’s Nest, and his Isola should have a pair of ponies and a good saddle-horse. He looked forward to a life of unalloyed happiness. CHAPTER II. “BUT THE DAYS DROP ONE BY ONE.” Next morning was fine, a morning so bright and balmy that the month might have been mistaken for September. Isola ran down to the garden in her neat little morning frock and linen collar, and ran about among the shrubs and autumn flowers in a much gayer mood than that of yesterday. She loved her garden--small and modest as it was in comparison with the grounds and gardens of her county neighbours--and on a morning like this it was rapture to her to run from flower to flower, and from shrub to shrub, with her great garden scissors in her hand, and her garden basket hanging over her arm, clipping a withered leaf or a fading flower every here and there, or plucking up those little groundsel plants which seem the perpetual expression of the earth’s fertility. Alas! those pale tea-roses, those sulphur and flame-coloured dahlias, meant the last crumbs of summer’s plenteous feast. Soon winter and barrenness would spread over the poor little garden; but even in the chill dark heart of mid-winter those graceful conifers and shining laurels, the vermilion on the holly bushes, the crimson of the hawthorn berries would give beauty to the scene; and then would come the return of Persephone with her hands full of gold, the abundant gold of crocus and daffodil, jonquil and pale primrose, the rain of yellow blossoms which heralds the spring.