Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable things
that presently gave their first sign.
It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour:
the children were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll.
One of the thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink now
from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it
would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet someone.
Someone would appear there at the turn of a path and would stand
before me and smile and approve. I didn't ask more than that--
I only asked that he should KNOW; and the only way to be sure he knew
would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome face.
That was exactly present to me--by which I mean the face was--
when, on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long
June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations
and coming into view of the house. What arrested me on the spot--
and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed for--
was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real.
He did stand there!--but high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of
the tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted me.
This tower was one of a pair--square, incongruous, crenelated structures--
that were distinguished, for some reason, though I could see
little difference, as the new and the old.
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