The day passed. The next day was passing. From an early hour Jane Preen had watched for the guest's arrival. In the afternoon, when she was weary of looking and looking in vain, she put on a warm shawl and her pink sun-bonnet and went out of doors with a book. A little lower down, towards the Islip Road, Brook Lane was flanked on one side by a grove of trees, too dense to admit of penetration. But there were two straight paths in them at some distance from each other, which would carry you to the back of the grove, and to the stream running parallel with the highway in front; from which stream Duck Brook derived its name. These openings in the trees were called Inlets curiously. A few worn benches stood in front of the trees, and also behind them, and had been there for ages. If you took your seat upon one of the front benches, you could watch the passing and re-passing (if there chanced to be any) on the high road; if you preferred a seat at the back, you might contemplate the pellucid stream and the meads beyond it, like any knight or fair damsel of romance. This was a favourite resort of Jane Preen's, a slight relief from the dullness at home. She generally sat by the stream, but to-day faced the road, for she was looking for Oliver. It was not a frequented road at all, but I think this has been said; sometimes an hour would pass away and not so much as a farmer's horse and cart jolt by, or a beggar shambling on foot. Jane had brought out a favourite book of the day, one of Bulwer Lytton's, which had been lent to her by Miss Julietta Chandler. Shall we ever have such writers again? Compare a work over which a tremendous fuss is made in the present day with one of those romances or novels of the past when some of us were young--works written by Scott, and Bulwer, and others I need not mention. Why, they were as solid gold compared with silver and tinsel. Jane tried to lose herself in the romantic love of Lucy and Paul, or in the passionate love-letters of Sir William Brandon, written when he was young; and she could not do so. Her eyes kept turning, first to that way of the road, then to this: she did not know which way Oliver would come. By rail to Crabb station she supposed, and then with a fly onwards; though being strange to the neighbourhood he might pitch upon any out-of-the-way route and so delay his arrival. Suddenly her heart stopped beating and then coursed on to fever heat. A fly was winding along towards her in the distance, from the direction of Crabb. Jane rose and waited close to the path. It was not Oliver. Three ladies and a child sat in the fly. They all stared at her, evidently wondering who she was and what she did there. She went back to the bench, but did not open her book again.