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It was a second hand copy, but in excellent preservation. The flyleaf was missing. On going over yesterday I found that it was my book, and was able to prove it by several marginal notes in my handwriting.
I asked. "No, sir." "No! you read it well; you have been in England?" "Oh, no!" with some animation. "You have been in English families?" Still the answer was "No." Here my eye, resting on the flyleaf of the book, saw written, "Frances Evan Henri." "Your name?" I asked "Yes, sir."
I picked up a dainty edition of Aucassin and Nicolette with the intention of getting upon ground less emotional, and observed on the flyleaf 'D.H. from I.A. In memory of the Hill of Stars. I looked appreciatively at the binding, and as soon as possible put it down.
'Message received that an Arab with a big bundle on his head has been noticed loitering about the neighbourhood of St Pancras Station. He seemed to be accompanied by a young man who had the appearance of a tramp. Young man seemed ill. They appeared to be waiting for a train, probably to the North. Shall I advise detention? I scribbled on the flyleaf of the note. 'Have them detained.
Then I unfolded it and held it to my eyes in the keen October moonshine. Scribbled in sore haste, by a very tremulous little hand, with a pencil, on the flyleaf of some book, my darling's message is still difficult to read; it was doubly so in the moonlight, five-and-forty autumns ago. "You say you heard everything just now, and there is no time for further explanations.
Opening to the flyleaf, there in clear, bold writing was his name, "John Chadwick Brownleigh," and for the first time she realized that there had passed between them no word of her name. Strange that they two should have come so close as to need no names one with the other. But her heart leaped up with joy that she knew his name, and her eyes dwelt yearningly upon the written characters. John!
It was a copy of Thomson's 'Seasons', and on the flyleaf was written in a girl's hand the name of its late owner, Maria Shand. The truth flashed upon him at once. She must have gone down on that last night after he was in bed, and thus have made her little offering in silence, knowing that it would be hidden from him till he was far away from her.
"The miserable hound!" pronounced Miss Ram with extraordinary ferocity. From a drawer in her desk she took a manuscript book, bound in limp leather, tied with blue ribbon. Herein were contained the remarkable thoughts which from time to time had come to this woman during her seventeen years' occupancy of the chair in which she sat. Upon the flyleaf was inscribed "Aphorisms: by Eugenie Ram."
'Well! said Reggie, throwing up his arms at sight of Manisty, and skimming over the strawberry furrows towards them. 'Of all the muddles! I give you this blessed country. I'll never say a word for it again. Everything on this beastly line altered for May no notice to anybody! all the old trains printed as usual, and a wretched flyleaf tucked in somewhere that nobody saw or was likely to see.
In it he wrote "Affectionately yours, R. D. Blackmore." Then came Longfellow's poems. He scrawled "With deep esteem, Henry W. Longfellow" on the flyleaf. Then three volumes of Macaulay's "History of England." In the first he jotted "I have always wanted you to have these admirable books, T. B. M." In "The Mill on the Floss" he wrote "This comes to you still warm from the press, George Eliot."
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