I spent the night in great unrest, inventing imaginary difficulties when I overthrew those which really existed, picturing the expected interview in a thousand forms, framing and reframing every appeal I should make, and so wore out the night in a fever of consuming anticipation. I was thankful I had been captured while on staff duty; for I had ever made it a practice to dress myself with the most scrupulous attention when going into action, so that death himself might not find me unprepared--and, thanks to this, I was now enabled to make a fitting appearance. The feeling that I was outwardly prepared went far to reassure me, and when the time came for my meeting I had banished my uneasy apprehensions of the night, and recovered my habitual confidence. My sole anxiety was, lest I should fail in conveying an adequate impression of my appreciation of her sacrifice and undertaking for my sake, but when I saw her every doubting fled. I do not know how she was dressed, beyond that it served but to heighten her queenly beauty; which, rare as I remembered it, had now grown and developed beyond all my faint conceptions. Her amber hair had deepened into the richest auburn, its colour was undisguised by powder, and its abundance undistorted by the art of the hair-dresser. Her eyes were steady, and clear, and truthful; every line of her face had rounded out the promise of her youth, and her shape and carriage were divine. She moved like a goddess. "Margaret," I said, as I advanced towards her, forgetting all the openings I had so carefully rehearsed, "I can scarce believe I am awake. It seems incredible I should speak face to face with you here." "It is indeed a strange meeting," she returned. The words were nothing, but they were spoken in a tone of perfect quiet and control, without any trace of the emotion that broke my voice and dissipated my self-possession. "It is a meeting for which I have dreamed, but tried not to hope," I said, with much feeling. "And I had lived for nothing else," she returned, with unfaltering voice and the same absence of emotion. "Then, Margaret, it has come at last!" I cried, joyously, the temporary cloud passing as she spake. "No, it has not!" she said, with the coldest decision, and, with that incongruity of thought which springs upon us at the most inopportune moments, I wondered if every woman for whom I cared was to change her whole nature, the moment I left her side. I remembered Lucy, and now here was Margaret, whom I had known as the embodiment of impulsive affection, fencing with a coolness that enforced my admiration. I saw she had fully prepared herself, and instantly I resolved to change my ground. "Margaret," I said, falling back on the most unstudied tones at my command, "it was only yesterday I learned from Gaston the true reason of your presence here. We have both suffered too cruelly from the accidents of the past to risk any misunderstanding now for the want of perfect openness between us."