But the young people were too impatient to listen to further details; the moment they entered the gates they bounded forward. The windings of the approach, though calculated to show the finest trees on the property, they thought much too long, and by the time they reached the house they were breathless with impatience. Mr. Howard, who had been watching them from the window, was at the door to meet them. “Welcome to all of you,” he said, and he stooped down and kissed Leila repeatedly; “welcome to your future home, my Leila; may it be a happy home to you, my dearest child.” Leila seemed at first quite bewildered; the entrance hall seemed to be so large, the drawing-room larger _still_. The windows of the drawing-room opened on a trellised balcony, festooned with creeping plants, and filled with rare and beautiful flowers; a broad flight of steps, with stone balustrades on each side, and large vases, scarlet pomegranate and pink oleander in full bloom, led from this balcony to the terrace below; and beyond this terrace the velvet turf, interspersed with beds of gay and fragrant flowers, sloped down to the edge of the broad river, on which many little boats were gliding up and down; happily no steamboat being in sight on this first-favoured moment. All were loud in their expressions of admiration; they had never seen any thing more beautiful; but though Leila admired, she seemed still bewildered, and almost more oppressed than pleased. “It is very beautiful; but how shall I ever be able to manage such a house as this?” Selina whispered, “Don’t distress yourself, Leila, it is not till you are grown up that you will have to manage; your papa will do it now, and my mamma will help him.” Leila brightened a little, but still looked anxiously around the room: “Surely it is very large,” she said. It was Matilda’s observation, “Young mistress of Woodlands,” that had done all this; poor Leila was weighed down to the ground with a sudden sense of her responsibilities; to common observers she was a simple child, young, even for her years; but there was often a deep under-current of thought about her, to be discovered only in the changes of her expressive countenance, and in the hesitating, varied tones of her voice. Mr. Howard understood her: “We will manage all for you very nicely,” he said; “so, my dear Leila, do not be afraid; and this room will not look so large when it is furnished, and we have sofas, and chairs, and large tables, and little tables, and all sorts of pretty things in it; and it certainly will not be too large if we succeed in having all the kind friends around us at Christmas whom I hope we shall have. Your aunt, uncle, and cousins, Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, and Maria, and perhaps the Selbys, with Louisa, who knows?”