My long night's rest left me quite ready to get up at my usual hour, and I ran down to the dining-room, anxious to learn all I could about father's return. This would have to be gleaned in the first place from the servants no doubt, for mother was sure to be tired, and not improbably too much so to appear at breakfast. But punctual as I was, some one was there before me, standing in the window, looking out at our pretty garden, never prettier than in the spring, above all with the early morning light. A tall, well-knit figure familiar to me somehow. "Jocelyn!" I exclaimed, my eldest brother's personality being the first that occurred to me, "so it was you after all! Did father send for you?" He turned; no, it was not Jocelyn? "I am so sorry," he said, though the regret expressed was tempered by a smile, "I am so sorry to disappoint you, but I can't help it! You see I am only myself--not `Jocelyn'?" Though I did not say so, I cannot but confess that the disappointment was scarcely worthy of the name, for the unexpected guest was Clarence Payne! "Oh, how delightful!" was my first thought; "now I am going to hear all! And things must have gone rightly--he looks in such good spirits--Dad and he must have taken to each other." But even while these ideas rushed across my mind, I was conscious, simultaneously, as it were, of extreme surprise, and this, I suppose, must have been the prominent expression of my face, for the newcomer looked just a shade crestfallen. "I am so sorry," he began again, and this pulled me together. "Please don't say that," I exclaimed; "you make me feel so rude, and indeed I don't mean to be so. I was only, well, very surprised. But I am very pleased, for ever so many reasons. To begin with, I feel sure things went well at Liverpool, otherwise you would not be here, and-- and--what about the poor Greys, and did you and father travel here together? and--oh I have such a lot of questions to ask. I feel half-choking with them," and I sat down, really feeling almost overwhelmed with the rush of thoughts and "wonderings" in my brain. "You shall ask what you please, and I scarcely think, that there will be anything which we--or I--will not be able to answer," he said kindly. "Indeed, it was partly, greatly, to satisfy your most natural wish-- right--to hear more, that I have come here." I felt my cheeks grow red. "It is very good of you to put it in that way, Mr Payne," I said. "I felt so ashamed when your father commended me the other day; even you do not fully know how wrong and foolish I was. No one does except Moore and myself. No, scarcely Moore. I should like you to know the whole of it, but you see I don't want to bring in Isabel Wynyard, and possibly expose her to blame for having gossipped." I stopped in consideration. "Perhaps," I resumed, "no one need ever know any more," and I looked up at him as I said so.