It was almost dark when Jack reached Swayne’s Cottages, and there was no light in Mrs. Preston’s window to indicate her presence. The only bit of illumination there was in the dim dewy twilight road, was a gleam from old Betty’s perennial fire, which shone out as she opened the door to watch the passage of the dog-cart just then returning from Ridley, where it ought to have carried Mr. John to dinner. The dog-cart was just returning home, in an innocent, unconscious way; but how much had happened in the interval! the thought made Jack’s head whirl a little, and made him half smile; only half smile--for such a momentous crisis is not amusing. He had not had time to think whether or not he was rapturously happy, as a young lover ought to be: on the whole, it was a very serious business. There were a thousand things to think of, such as take the laughter out of a man; yet he did smile as it occurred to him in what an ordinary commonplace sort of way the dog-cart and the mare and the groom had been jogging back along the dusty roads, while he had been so weightily engaged; and how all those people had been calmly dining at Ridley--were dining now, no doubt--and mentally criticising the dishes, and making feeble dinner table-talk, while he had been settling his fate; in less time than they could have got half through their dinner--in less time than even the bay mare could devour the way between the two houses! Jack felt slightly giddy as he thought of it, and his face grew serious again under his smile. The cottage door stood innocently open; there was nobody and nothing between him and his business; he had not even to knock, to be opened to by a curious indifferent servant, as would have been the case in another kind of house. The little passage was quite dark, but there was another gleam of fire-light from the kitchen, where Mr. Swayne sat patient with his rheumatism, and even Mrs. Preston’s door was ajar. Out of the soft darkness without, into the closer darkness within, Jack stepped with a beating heart. This was not the pleasant part of it; this was not like the sudden delight of meeting Pamela--the sudden passion of laying hold on her and claiming her as his own. He stopped in the dark passage, where he had scarcely room to turn, and drew breath a little. He felt within himself that if Mrs. Preston in her black cap and her black gown fell into his arms and saluted him as her son, that he would not be so deeply gratified as perhaps he ought to have been. Pamela was one thing, but her mother was quite another. If mothers, and fathers too for that matter, could but be done away with when their daughters are old enough to marry, what a great deal of trouble it would spare in this world! But that was not to be thought of. He had come to do it, and it had to be done. While he stood taking breath and collecting himself, Mr. Swayne feeling that the step which had crossed his threshold was not his wife’s step, called out to the intruder.