She wanted me, my love--how she wanted me! It was the first letter I had ever received from her--a little sweet pleasance of her soul, crossed with shadow and sunshine. Had I ever guessed, she asked, how love could fly? By so much the greater speed than an express train, that, though she had herself seen me off from Footover Station, she had been waiting on the platform at Waterloo for two hours--scheduled time--when I had reached it. And I had never even noticed her waiting and holding out her arms among the throng; but had jumped into a hansom (there she was wrong; it was an omnibus), and had sped away into the shadows, leaving love forlorn. Should she ever find me again? Lord Skene, she told me, had come to the sudden resolution to take his whole family up to town--they were going to start in a day or two--herself included; and that had given her at first a wild thrill of joy. But then she had remembered that London was farther than Evercreech from the Continent, and her spirits had fallen again. Still, it would be sweet to tread the stones--or thereabouts--which my feet had lately trodden. She spoke of Death--how dreadful it was that love, like all lesser things, must die--that four hands, clinging at once, had no greater hold on life than two. But there I corrected her very confidently, when I came to answer. “Is not love the seed love the flower, and love the flower love the seed? What is death but the snake casting its skin? The old autumn cloak falls off, and there is spring underneath--not a new spring, Ira, but the same spring as always; you and I as we are at this moment; you and I as we shall be for ever. Our love shall ride on waves of day and night, summer and winter, joy and sorrow, till it reach the shores which are timeless, the shores which are unfruitful because all the ripe fruit of love is gathered there never to reproduce itself again, but to enjoy henceforth all the raptures of itself without the penalties.” Those were love’s metaphysics. They might not satisfy philosophers; but they satisfied Ira, which was infinitely more to the point. Philosophy may endure the thought of death; it is a sweeter wisdom, I think, to delight in it. So sounds the view-halloo, and I am off again, fresh from that little breathing space. But one thought now troubles me--troubles us all. What has occurred, if anything has occurred, to send our quarry into hiding? CHAPTER XXVIII. ON THE SCENT