For a few moments she paused, evidently startled at the apparition of a stranger, then recognised the intruder, and came forward and offered him her hand frankly, as if he had been quite a commonplace acquaintance. ‘Pray forgive me for coming in unannounced,’ he said; ‘I had no idea I should find you here. Yet it is natural that you should come sometimes to look at the old gardens.’ ‘I am living here,’ answered Laura. ‘Didn’t you know?’ ‘No, indeed. No one informed me of the change in your plans.’ ‘I am so fond of the dear old house and garden, and the place is so full of associations for me, that I was easily induced to stay when Mr. Clare told me that it would be better for the house. I am a kind of housekeeper in charge of everything.’ ‘I hope you will stay here all your life,’ said Treverton quickly, and then he coloured crimson, as if he had said something awful. The same crimson flush mounted almost as quickly to Laura’s pale cheeks and brow. Both stood looking at the ground, embarrassed as a schoolboy and girl, while the blackbirds whistled triumphantly in the shrubbery, and a thrush in the orchard went into ecstasies of melody. Laura was the first to recover. ‘Have you been staying long at Hazlehurst?’ she asked, quietly. ‘I only came an hour ago. My first visit was to the Manor, though I expected to find it an empty house.’ Another picture now appeared in the green frame--a young lady with a neat little figure, a retroussé nose, and an agreeably vivacious countenance. ‘Come here, Celia,’ cried Laura, ‘and let me introduce Mr. Treverton. You have heard your father talk about him. Mr. Treverton, Miss Clare.’ Miss Clare bowed and smiled, and murmured something indefinite. ‘Poor Edward!’ she was thinking all the while. ‘This Mr. Treverton is awfully good-looking.’ ‘Awfully’ was Miss Clare’s chief laudatory adjective; her superlative form of praise was ‘quite too awfully,’ and when enthusiasm carried her beyond herself she called things ‘nice.’ ‘Quite too awfully nice,’ was her maximum of rapture. As she rarely left Hazlehurst Vicarage, and knew in all about twenty people, it is something to her credit that she had made herself mistress of the current metropolitan slang. ‘I suppose you are staying at the Sampsons?’ she said. ‘Mr. Sampson is always talking of you. “My friend Treverton,” he calls you, but I suppose you won’t mind that. It’s rather trying.’ ‘I think I can survive even that,’ answered John, who felt grateful to this young person for having come to his rescue at a moment when he felt himself curiously embarrassed. ‘Mr. Sampson has been very kind to me.’ ‘If you can only manage to endure him he is an awfully good-natured little fellow,’ said Miss Clare with her undergraduate air. She modelled her manners and opinions upon those of her brother, and was in most things a feminine copy of the Oxonian. ‘But how do you contrive to get on with his sister? She is quite too dreadful.’