There was a world in that "ah!" "Well," said little Miss Pimpernell, in her staunch good-nature, "I think it is best to be charitable and take people as we find them. I have seen a good deal of the Clydes during the month they have been here and like them very much. But you will have an opportunity of judging for yourself, Frank, as Minnie Clyde promised me to come down to-day and help us with the decorations." "She's a very nice-looking girl," said the curate. "Do you really think her pretty?" asked Bessie Dasher. One could detect a slight tone of dissatisfaction in her voice, and she spoke with a decided pout. "Well, perhaps she's not exactly pretty," said Mr Mawley, diplomatically; "but nice-looking, at all events--that was the word I used, Miss Bessie." "But she dresses so plainly!" said Lizzie Dangler. "I call her quite a dowdthy!" lisped Baby Blake. "And I say she's very nice!" said Seraphine Dasher, who had none of the petty dislike of her sex to praise another girl that might turn out to be a possible rival. "That's right, my dear," said Miss Pimpernell; "I'm glad, Seraphine, to hear you take the part of the absent; Miss Clyde ought to be here now-- she promised me to come soon after luncheon." Even as the good old soul spoke, I heard the outer door of the school- room open, and a light footstep along the passage. "There she is now, I do believe!" whispered Miss Pimpernell to me. I could scarcely breathe. I felt that I had at last arrived at the crisis of my life. It must be _her_, I thought, for my heart palpitated with wild pulsations. And, as the thought thrilled through me, my lost madonna entered the room. I was not one whit surprised. I had been certain that I should see her again! CHAPTER FOUR. "HOPE." "The wit, the vivid energy of sense, The truth of nature, which, with Attic point, And kind, well-temper'd satire, smoothly keen, Steals through the soul, and without pain corrects." Yes, she it was of whom I had thought and dreamt, and built airy castles on imaginative foundations--chateaux en Espagne--that had almost crumbled into vacancy during those long and weary weeks, and monotonous months, of waiting, and watching, and longing! She entered; and the dull, disordered school-room, with its leaf-strewn floor all covered with broken branches and naked boughs of chopped-up evergreens, its mass of piled forms, its lumbering desks and hassocks, its broken windows, its down-hanging maps of colossal continents, seemed changed all at once, in a moment, as if by the touch of some magic wand, into an enchanted palace. The fairy princess had at last appeared, the sleeping beauty been awakened; and all was altered.