People are apt to say, when telling of a surprise, that a feather would have knocked them down. I nearly fell without the feather and without the touch. To see a dead woman standing straight up before me, and to hear her say "How are you, and is the Squire at home?" might have upset the balance of a giant. But I could not be mistaken. There, waiting at the front-door to come in, her face within an inch of mine, was Nash Caromel's first wife, Charlotte Tinkle; who for some two years now had been looked upon as dead and buried over in California. "Is Mr. Todhetley at home!" she repeated. "And can I see him?" "Yes," I answered, coming partially out of my bewilderment. "Do you mind staying here just a minute, while I tell him?" For, to hand in a dead woman, might take him aback, as it had taken me. The pater stood bolt upright, waiting for Mrs. Scott (as he had supposed it to be) to enter. "It is not Mrs. Scott," I whispered, shutting the door and going close up to him. "It--it is some one else. I hardly like to tell you, sir; she may give you a fright." "Why, what does the lad mean?--what are you making a mystery of now, Johnny?" cried he, staring at me. "Give me a fright! I should like to see any woman give me that. Is it Mrs. Scott, or is it not?" "It is some one we thought dead, sir." "Now, Johnny, don't be a muff. Somebody you thought dead! What on earth's come to you, lad? Speak out!" "It is Nash Caromel's first wife, sir: Charlotte Tinkle." The pater gazed at me as a man bereft of reason. I don't believe he knew whether he stood on his head or his heels. "Charlotte Tinkle!" he exclaimed, backing against the curtain. "What, come to life, Johnny?" "Yes, sir, and she wants to see you. Perhaps she has never been dead." "Bless my heart and mind! Bring her in." The first thing Charlotte the First did when she came in and the Squire clasped her by her two hands, was to burst into a fit of sobbing. Some wine stood on the sideboard; the Squire poured her out a glass, and she untied the strings of her bonnet as she sat down. "If I might take it off for a minute?" she said. "I have had it on all the way from Liverpool." "Do so, my dear. Goodness me! I think I must be in a dream. And so you are not dead!" "Yes, I knew it was what you must have all been thinking," she answered, stifling her sobs. "Poor Nash!--what a dreadful thing it is! I cannot imagine how the misconception can have arisen." "What misconception?" asked the pater, whose wits, once gone a wool-gathering, rarely came back in a hurry. "That I had died." "Why, that friend of yours with whom you were staying--Bunn--Munn--which was it, Johnny?--wrote to tell your husband so." Mrs. Nash Caromel, sitting there in the twilight, her brown hair as smooth as ever and her eyes as meek, looked at the Squire in surprise. "Oh no, that could not have been; Mr. Munn would not be likely to write anything of the sort. Impossible."