Save for that shrinking reticence which would fain hide the secret, as the modest snowdrop hides its head, and which must always accompany the feeling if it be genuine, there was nothing to be ashamed of in this love. It is true that it had become entwined with every fibre of her heart, was a part and parcel of her very being. It would perhaps have been impossible--at least, it would have been very improbable--for Sara Davenal, with her right feeling, her powers of discernment, which she possessed in a high degree, and her sound good sense, to fall in love with an unworthy man. She could not have met with a more worthy one than Oswald Cray. He had his faults--ay, who has not?--but they were faults of what may be called a high order; not mean, drivelling, scandalising faults, that abound in the world. Each was suited and suitable to the other, in taste, in position, in moral goodness: and their love had been given for aye; beyond the power of circumstances or time to change. They might never be more to each than they were now. Untoward fate might separate them; the world's bitter tongues, expediency, the poison of misunderstanding; any one of these separating causes might part them; Sara's unbending principle, Oswald's wrong-headed pride--it was impossible to foretell: but of one thing both might rest assured, that unto their dying day that love could never be wholly extinguished in either heart, so as to give place to another. Somehow the thoughts of Sara Davenal had wandered from the painful subject of Lady Oswald to this brighter one: wandered unwittingly, against her will. She would not have _chosen_ to dwell upon her love that sad night, or on the one sweet word of Oswald when he last parted from her: but there it was, sounding in her ears and her heart: and she lost herself in one of the sweetest reveries that ever maiden pictured of the future. Suddenly she was aroused from it. Not by any thought of poor Lady Oswald, or of her father's sorrow, or of the minutes that were hurrying on, or that it was time she prepared for bed; but by the sight of some one coming in at the front gate. It was nothing unusual for that gate to be invaded at night, by messengers summoning Dr. Davenal to some urgent bed of sickness. But this intruder had something peculiar about him, or about his movements, which attracted her eye.