It was with no particular excess of pleasure that Daisy received and perused the first-written of these epistles. To be sure, at the first glance over the words her face flushed and her eyes brightened; but the next few minutes her heart sank within her with that undefined sense of impending evil of which we are all of us so frequently conscious. The thought of Paul's immediate return had been weighing upon her for some days; she had been uncertain how to treat him. She could not help acknowledging to herself that her feelings towards him had undergone a certain amount of alteration during his absence. She was unwilling that that alteration should be noticed by him, and yet could not avoid a lurking suspicion that she must have betrayed it in her letters. She gathered this from the tone of his replies, more especially from his last communication, in which he announced his speedy arrival in town. Of course she had not breathed to him one word of her acquaintance with Colonel Orpington; there was no occasion why she should have done so, she argued to herself; the two men would never be brought in contact. And yet it would be impossible for her to renew the intimacy which had previously existed with Paul, without his becoming aware that she had other calls upon her time, and insisted upon being made acquainted with their nature; and then, when he found it out, the fact of her having concealed this newly-formed friendship from him would tell very badly against her. It would have been very much better that she should have mentioned it, giving some sufficiently satisfactory account of its origin, and passing over it lightly as though it were of no moment. She could have done this in regard to the meeting with John Merton and its subsequent results--not that she had ever said anything of that to her lover, by-the-way--without, she was sure, exciting Paul's suspicion; but this was a different matter. In his last letter Paul had proposed to meet her on what would now be the next afternoon, and by that time she must have made up her mind fully as to the course she intended to pursue. The interview to which she was then proceeding might perhaps have an important effect upon her resolution. And as she thought of that interview her heart sank again, and her face became very grave and thoughtful; so grave and thoughtful did she look as she hurried along one of the dull streets in the neighbourhood of Russell Square, that a man to whom she was well known, and by whom every expression of her face was treasured, scarcely knew her, as, coming in the opposite direction, he encountered and passed by her. She did not notice him; but he turned, and in the next instant was by her side. She looked up; it was John Merton.