"Why, those promised you by the man who wrote from San Francisco--Munn, was his name? Charlotte's diary, and letters, and things, that he was sending off to New York." "Oh--ay--I remember," answered Nash, pulling his senses together. "No, they have not come." "Been lost on the way, do you suppose? What a pity!" "They may have been. I have not had them." Nash Caromel walked straight away with the last words. Either to get rid of the subject, or to join some people who had just then crossed the top of the path. "Caromel does not like talking of her: I can see that, Johnny," remarked the Squire to me later. "I don't believe he'd have done as he did, but for this second Charlotte throwing her wiles across his path. He fell into the snare and his conscience pricks him." "I dare say, sir, it will come right with time. She is very pretty." "Yes, most crooked things come straight with time," assented the Squire. "Perhaps this one will." Would it, though! The weeks and the months went on. Caromel's Farm seemed to prosper, its mistress being a most active manager, ruling with an apparently soft will, but one firm as iron; and little Dun grew to be about fifteen months old. The cow might have behaved ungenteelly to him, as Miss Bailey's ghost says to Captain Smith, but it had not hurt the little fellow, or his stout legs either, which began now to be running him into all kinds of mischief. And so the time came round again to August--just a year after the fête, and nearly twenty-two months after Nash's second marriage. One evening, Tod being out and Mrs. Todhetley in the nursery, I was alone with the Squire in the twilight. The great harvest moon was rising behind the trees; and the Squire, talking of some parish grievance that he had heard of from old Jones the constable, let it rise: while I was wishing he would call for lights that I might get on with "The Old English Baron," which I was reading for about the seventeenth time. "And you see, Johnny, if Jones had been firm, as I told him this afternoon, and taken the fellow up, instead of letting him slope off and be lost, the poachers---- Who's this coming in, lad?" The Squire had caught sight of some one turning to the door from the covered path. I saw the fag-end of a petticoat. "I think it must be Mrs. Scott, sir. The mother said she had promised to come over one of these first evenings." "Ay," said the Squire. "Open the door for her, Johnny." I had the front-door open in a twinkling, and saw a lady with a travelling-cloak on her arm. But she bore no resemblance to Mrs. Scott. "Is Mr. Todhetley at home?" The soft voice gave me a thrill and a shock, though years had elapsed since I heard it. A confused doubt came rushing over me; a perplexing question well-nigh passed my lips: "Is it a living woman or a dead one?" For there, before me, stood Nash Caromel's dead wife, Charlotte the First. CHARLOTTE AND CHARLOTTE. I.