ETHEL CHURCHILL.
317
and, at that moment, Lavinia, who had been occupied by anxious expectation of Miss Churchill's arrival, was called from the room.
"Can you," said she, on her return, "receive a visitor whom, only yesterday, you were wishing to see?"
An instinct of the heart seemed to tell Walter who the visitor was, and a faint colour came, for a moment, over his face.
"She has come!" exclaimed he; "let me look upon her, and die happy!"
He strove to rise, but the next moment Ethel's gentle hand forced him to be seated; as, in a broken voice, she said, "Oh, Walter! was it kind to let your old friends find you thus?"
He looked at her with a sweet, calm smile, as he answered, "They find me happy!"
