At first the novelty of the country arrested her attention, but long before the four days were over, interest had evaporated, and she was consumed by alternate longings to reach her destination, and a panic of dread at what awaited her when there. How incomprehensible to be dreading a destination which meant Dorothea, and the fulfilment of a lifelong dream! How still more incomprehensible to find it an effort to think of Dorothea at all! After what seemed an eternity of waiting, the journey came to an end. The train drew up before a little sun-baked station which was like a score of others that had been passed before, and on the platform stood a man in uniform, and a woman in white whose thin, sweet face was turned eagerly towards the windows of the train, and with a rush of pain and joy the traveller recognised the friend of her girlhood. The two women kissed, and clung, and gazed, and fell back to gaze again. On Dorothea's face was written love and admiration, touched with the wistfulness of the exile. This young, fresh girl was only a year her junior--how sweet, how pink, how _English_ she appeared! The sight of her was as a breath of green lanes sunk deep between flowering hedges. Katrine's eyes felt the smart of tears. How thin, how old, how changed, but oh, how sweet! sweeter than ever, and with just the old, dear, loving ways. As for Jack Middleton himself, he had improved in appearance, as men have a trying habit of doing, in contradistinction to their women kind. He looked broader, more imposing, the loss of complexion was in his case little detriment. When he had left England he had been but a lanky youth, now he was a man, and a handsome man at that. Katrine looking on felt a pang of resentment. This land of exile demanded many tolls of the women who followed their men-kind to its shores, not least among them the loss of youth and bloom! Captain Middleton took charge of Mrs Mannering, and the two friends drove home together, hand in hand, but silent. There was so much to be said that it seemed difficult to begin, and Katrine was subtly conscious that Dorothea shared her own feeling of shyness and strain. Three days had passed since Bedford's return, the story of the wreck had been told--how much, how little, had Dorothea divined? Each moment Katrine braced herself to hear a name--_two_ names; when time passed on without mention of either, the silence but added to her strain. At each turn of the dusty path she glanced ahead with shrinking eyes, each bungalow held a possibility, a dread. Did _he_ live there? Was he perhaps even now looking out from behind those shrouding-blinds? And of what was Dorothea thinking as she sat so silently by her side? The look in her sweet, tired eyes, the clinging touch of the thin hand were so eloquent of love that Katrine's heart could not but be content with her welcome, but her thoughts were awhirl.