Somehow, Agnes did not now feel so strongly as she had done a few days before that it was laid on her to win back Claude. The fact was that, after her last conversation with Sir Percival, she had been led to consider by what means she should endeavor to win him back to her. What were the arts which she should practise to compass this end? She had often read of the successful attempts made by young women to regain the affections of the men who had been cruel enough--in some cases wise enough--to forsake them. She could not, however, remember exactly what means they had adopted to effect their purpose. She had an idea that most of the men had been brought by force of circumstances to perceive how false-hearted the other girl was; she had a distinct recollection that the other girl played a very important part in the return of the lover to his first and only true love. After giving some consideration to the matter she came to the conclusion that she, too, could only trust to time to lead Claude back to her. She thought of the lines: “Having waited all my life, I can well wait A little longer.” She had spent her life in waiting for him to return to her, but he had not yet done so; the man who had gone forth loving her, and with her promise to love him, had not returned to her and her love. She would have to wait a little longer. But somehow she did not now feel impatient to see him once again at her feet. The terrible sense of loneliness that had fallen on her when he had left her presence on the day after his arrival at the Court--that appalling consciousness of desertion--was no longer experienced by her. She awoke from her few hours' sleep on the morning after Clare had come to her, without her previous feeling of being alone in the world. Her first thought now was that in half an hour she would be seated at the breakfast-table opposite to that sweet girl who had been sent to her by a kind Fate, just at the moment when she needed her most. Before the half hour had quite passed she was sitting opposite to Clare; and before another hour had passed she was sitting by the side of Clare in her phaeton, pointing out to her the various landmarks round that part of Brackenshire, as the ponies trotted along the road. Agnes felt as happy as though she had succeeded in solving the problem of how to win back an errant lover. “It's not a bit like the England of my fancy,” cried Clare, when the phaeton had been driven on for some miles beyond the little town of Brackenhurst. “Is it possible that this is the first glimpse you have had of England?” cried Agnes. “It is practically my first glimpse of England. I could not have been more than a year old when I was taken abroad.” “And yet I am sure that you had all an exile's longing to return to England--you learned to allude to it as home, did you not?” said Agnes.