“All right,” I groaned. “But I wish you’d let me take away some little remembrance, some dear promise, some sweet word of hope, to comfort me in my absence.” She laughed, blushed, turned pale, looked at me, shook her head, and exclaimed, “No--it is too late; you have pledged your word, and you mustn’t ask me for a sign of any kind until you return from Thistlewood.” And the evasive little creature, with her hair shining like spangles in the rays of the setting sun, danced a minuet across the lawn, and vanished within the house. CHAPTER III. _Isaac._ “Good lack, with what eyes a father sees! As I have life she is the very reverse of all this.” _The Duenna._ Monday morning came; a still and hazy morning, portentous of noontide heat. I had not written to uncle Richard to tell him the train I meant to leave by, for two reasons: I didn’t want to give him or his daughter the trouble of meeting me, and as there were several trains during the day, I could not say at what hour I might take it into my head to start. However, as it was not possible for me to see Conny, and as the time promised to hang tediously upon my hands, I sent the landlady for a fly, packed a carpetbag, and started to catch a train that left at half-past twelve. On my way to the station, I stopped at the bank to bid my uncle a final farewell, but found him out. “I hope you’ll enjoy yourself,” said Mr. Curling, with a grave face. “I hope I may.” “Will you be long absent?” “I don’t know. Perhaps a week; perhaps a fortnight. Good-bye.” And out I went. Great heaven! as I recall the nod I gave him, I am amazed to think how full of the unexpected the future is. You shake a man by the hand and leave him, and by the time you meet him again, everything the least likely to occur has happened. Though you held him the most honest of living beings, he is committed for forgery; or though you thought him doomed to be a struggling man all his life, he has made a fortune on the Stock Exchange, and is surrounded by architects with plans for a mansion; or though you considered him a very ordinary-minded person, he has just acknowledged himself the author of a book the world has gone into ecstacies over. So shifting is this life, it is scarcely possible to turn your back upon the most familiar object, without finding it changed on looking at it again. It is a pantomime, but not a droll one. Harlequin Time does indeed frisk it merrily; but there is too much of the scythe about his rod, too much tragedy about the metamorphoses he works, to make us think him diverting. It was a little after half-past twelve when I got into the train, and it was very nearly half-past two when I got out. Thistlewood Station was a little platform, backed by a diminutive shed, with a great hill running up behind it. I asked a porter the way to Mr. Hargrave’s house, and he directed me to a high road.