throughout West Cornwall as heir to the
Porthgenna estate.

In the next month, the month of April,
before the housekeeper and the steward had
done discussing their last and most important
fragment of news, the postman made his
welcome appearance at Porthgenna Tower,
and brought another note from Mrs. Frankland.
The housekeeper's face brightened
with unaccustomed pleasure and surprise as
she read the first line. The letter announced
that the long-deferred visit of her master and
mistress to the old house would take place
early in May, and that they might be
expected to arrive any day from the first to the
tenth of the month.

The reasons which had led the owners of
Porthgenna to fix a period, at last, for visiting
their country seat, were connected with
certain particulars into which Mrs. Frankland
had not thought it advisable to enter in
her letter. The plain facts of the case were,
that a little discussion had arisen between
the husband and wife in relation to the next
place of residence which they should select,
after the return from the continent of the
friends whose house they were occupying.
Mr. Frankland had very reasonably suggested
returning again to Long Beckley—
not only because all their oldest friends
lived in the neighbourhood, but also (and
circumstances made this an important
consideration) because the place had the
advantage of possessing an excellent resident
medical man. Unfortunately this latter
advantage, so far from carrying any weight
with it in Mrs. Frankland's estimation, actually
prejudiced her mind against the project
of going to Long Beckley. She had always,
she acknowledged, felt an unreasonable antipathy
to the doctor there. He might be a
very skilful, an extremely polite, and an
undeniably respectable man; but she never had
liked him, and never should, and she was
resolved to oppose the plan for living at Long
Beckley, because the execution of it would
oblige her to commit herself to his care. Two
other places of residence were next suggested:
but Mrs. Frankland had the same objection
to oppose to both— in each case, the resident
doctor would be a stranger to her, and she
did not like the notion of being attended by
a stranger. Finally, as she had all along
anticipated, the choice of the future abode
was left entirely to her own inclinations; and
then, to the amazement of her husband and
her friends, she immediately decided on going
to Porthgenna. She had formed this strange
project, and was now resolved on executing
it, partly because she was more curious than
ever to see the place again; partly, because the
doctor who had been with her mother in Mrs.
Treverton's last illness, and who had attended
her through all her own little maladies, when
she was a child, was still living and practising
in the Porthgenna neighbourhood. Her
father and the doctor had been old cronies,
and had met for years at the same chessboard
every Saturday night. They had kept
up their friendship, when circumstances
separated them, by exchanges of Christmas
presents every year; and when the sad
news of the Captain's death had reached
Cornwall, the doctor had written a letter
of sympathy and condolence to Rosamond,
speaking in such terms of his former friend
and patron as she could never forget.
He must be a nice, fatherly old man, now
— the man of all others who was fittest,
on every account, to attend her. In short,
Mrs. Frankland was just as strongly
prejudiced in favour of employing the Porthgenna
doctor, as she was prejudiced against
employing the Long Beckley doctor; and she
ended— as all young married women, with
affectionate husbands, may, and do, end,
whenever they please— by carrying her own
point, and having her own way.

On the first of May, the west rooms were
all ready for the reception of the master and
mistress of the house. The beds were aired,
the carpets cleaned, the sofas and chairs
uncovered. The housekeeper put on her satin
gown and her garnet brooch; the maid
followed suit, at a respectful distance, in brown
merino and a pink ribbon; and the bald old
steward, determining not to be outdone by
the women, produced a new and becoming
auburn wig, ordered expressly for the occasion,
and a black brocaded waistcoat, which almost
rivalled the gloom and grandeur of the housekeeper's
satin gown. The day wore on,
evening closed in, bed-time came— and there
were no signs yet of Mr. and Mrs. Frankland.

But the first was an early day on which to
expect them. The steward thought so, and
the housekeeper added that it would be foolish,
to feel disappointed, even if they did not
arrive until the fifth. The fifth came, and
still nothing happened. The sixth, seventh,
eighth, and ninth followed; and no sound of
the expected carriage-wheels came near the
lonely house.

On the tenth, and last day, the housekeeper,
the steward, and the maid, all three rose
earlier than usual; all three opened and shut
doors, and went up and down stairs oftener
than was needful; all three looked out
perpetually towards the moor and the high road,
and thought the view flatter, and duller, and
emptier than ever it had appeared to them
before. The day waned, the sunset came;
darkness changed the perpetual looking out
of the housekeeper, the steward, and the
maid, into perpetual listening; ten o'clock
struck, and still there was nothing to be
heard when they went to the open window,
but the dull, wearisome, ceaseless beating of
the surf on the sandy shore.

The housekeeper began to calculate the
time that would be consumed on the railway
journey from London to Devonshire, and on
the posting journey afterwards through Cornwall
to Porthgenna. When had Mr. and Mrs.