When the day came on which the two travellers were to reach Launay Mrs. Miles was very much disturbed in her mind. In what way should she receive the girl? In her last communication,--her very last,--she had called Bessy her enemy; and now Bessy was being brought home to be made her daughter-in-law under her own roof. How sweet it would be to stand at the door and welcome her in the hall, among all the smiling servants, to make a tender fuss and hovering over her, as would be so natural with a mother-in-law who loved an adopted daughter as tenderly as Mrs. Miles loved Bessy! How pleasant to take her by the hand and lead her away into some inner sanctum where warm kisses as between mother and child would be given and taken; to hear her praises of Philip, and then to answer again with other praises; to tell her with words half serious and half drollery that she must now buckle on her armour and do her work, and take upon herself the task of managing the household! There was quite enough of softness in the old woman to make all this delightful. Her imagination revelled in thinking of it even at the moment in which she was telling herself that it was impossible. But it was impossible. Were she to force such a change upon herself Bessy would not believe in the sincerity of the change. She had told Bessy that she was her enemy! At last the carriage which had gone to the station was here; not the waggonette on this occasion, but the real carriage itself, the carriage which was wont to toddle four miles an hour about the parish. “This is an honour meant for the prodigal daughter,” said Philip, as he took his seat. “If you had never been naughty, we should only have had the waggonette, and we then should have been there in half the time.” Mrs. Miles, when she heard the wheels on the gravel, was even yet uncertain where she would place herself. She was fluttered, moving about from the room into the hall and back, when the old butler spoke a careful word: “Go into the library, madam, and Mr. Philip will bring her to you there.” Then she obeyed the butler,--as she had probably never done in her life before. Bessy, as soon as her step was off the carriage, ran very quickly into the house. “Where is my aunt?” she said. The butler was there showing the way, and in a moment she had thrown her arms round the old woman. Bessy had a way of making her kisses obligatory, from which Mrs. Miles had never been able to escape. Then, when the old woman was seated, Bessy was at once upon her knees before her. “Say that you love me, aunt. Say that at once! Say that first of all!” “You know I love you.” “I know I love you. Oh, I am so glad to have you again. It was so hard not to be with you when I thought that you were ill. I did not know how sick it would make me to be away from you.” Neither then nor at any time afterwards was there a word spoken on the one side or the other as to that declaration of enmity.