And I actually did trust her with my precious baby, and stood at the window watching her with breathless anxiety and satisfaction for a whole hour, afraid to lose sight of her for a moment. Steady as a judge walked Lizzie, grand and important in her “charge,” disdaining the passing appeals of “neighbours,” marching along on the sunny side of the way--for it was already cold enough to make that necessary--shading the child’s eyes with such adroit changes of his drapery and her own, preserving him from the wind at the corners, and picking her steps over the unequal road with such care and devotion, that I could have run downstairs and kissed her on the spot. The sight, somehow, drove half the bitterness of my thoughts out of my head. The sky was clear with that “shining after rain” which has so much hope and freshness in it. The wind was brisk, with plenty of floating clouds to knock about. Before us, in the clear air, the castle rock looked almost near enough to have touched it, with the sun shining on its bold grey front, and all those white puffs of clouds blowing against and around it, like heavenly children at their play. How it stood there, everlasting! How the sun smiled and caressed those old walls where Harry was, and warmed and brightened the cheerful bit of road where, to and fro, before my eyes, unconscious in his baby state, went Harry’s son. Ah, me! to-day is to-day, if one were to die to-morrow. I was too young to grope about for darkness to come, and lose the good of this beautiful hour. Besides, does not the good Lord know all about to-morrow? Beginning and end of it, one thing with another, it pleases Him. Presently we shall have it, and strength for it. So, away till your time, you dark hour! just now it is not God, but an enemy who sends you. The light is sweet, and it is a pleasant thing to behold the sun. CHAPTER X. When Harry came home that evening, I knew he had something to tell me; but after the first start was over, I felt sure it was not anything painful from the look of his face. I may venture to say now that he was a very handsome young man in those days; but the thing that first drew my heart to him was the way he always betrayed himself with his face. Whatever he was feeling or thinking, you could tell it by his eyes; and if he sometimes happened to say anything he did not think, as happens to everybody now and then, his eyes woke up to a kind of sly, half ashamed, half amused expression, and let you know he was fibbing in the oddest way in the world. “I almost fell upon a discovery to-night,” said Harry. “What should you have thought, Milly darling, if I had brought you home word about your father and that estate you are to come heir to? I actually thought I was on the scent of it for ten minutes at least.” “But it was a mistake,” said I, very quietly.