So ardent did my desire expand to identify it with its owner that I begged the servant not to announce me, nor to disturb Miss Benette if singing. Thoné took the cue, gave me a kind of smile, and preceded me with a noiseless march to the very back parlor; I advanced on tiptoe and crouching forwards. Laura, too, was there, sitting at the table. She neither read nor worked, nor had anything in her hands; but with more tact than I should have expected from her, only bowed, and did not move her lips. In the morning light my angel sat, and her notes, full orbed and star-like, descended upon my brain. Few notes I heard,--she was just concluding,--the strain ebbed as the memory of a kiss itself dissolving; but I heard enough to know that her voice was, indeed, the realization of all her ideal promise. I addressed her as she arose, and told her, in very few words, my errand. She was perturbless as usual, and only looked enchanted, the enchantment betraying itself in the eye, not in any tremble or the faintest flush. "Do bring them, sir," she said; "and as you say this gentleman has eaten nothing, I will try what I can do to make him eat. It is so important that I wonder you could allow him to come out until he had breakfasted,"--for I had told her of his impatience; "afterwards, if he likes, he can go to see the houses. There are several, I do believe, if they have not been taken since yesterday." I went back to the carriage, and it was brought on to the gate, I walking beside it. Thoné was waiting, and held it open,--the sweet hay scented every breath. "Oh, how delicious!" said Seraphael, as he alighted, standing still and looking around. The meadows, the hedges, the secluded ways first attracted him; and then the garden, which I thought he would never have overpassed, then the porch, in which he stood. "And this is England!" he exclaimed; "it is strange how unlike it is to that wild dream-country I went to when last I came to London. This is more like heaven,--quiet and full of life!" These words recalled me to Clara. He had put his head into the very midst of those roses that showered over the porch. "Oh! I must gather one rose of all these,--there are so many; she will never miss it." And then he laughed. A soft, soft echo of his laugh was heard,--it startled me by its softness, it was so like an infant's. I looked over my shoulder, and there, in the shadow of the hall, I beheld her, her very self. It was she, indeed, who laughed, and her eye yet smiled. Without waiting for my introduction, she courtesied with a profound but easy air, and while, to match this singular greeting, Seraphael made his regal bow, she said, looking at him,--