As he stood holding his horse by the rein while he rang the bell, a side-door leading through the high brick wall from the garden, which stretched away behind the house, was suddenly opened, and a lady came through with a garden hat on, and garden gloves, and a basket full of rose leaves in her hand.

It was the lady of whom he had never ceased to think from the day on which he had been allowed just to touch her fingers, now five years ago.
It was she, of course, whom he had come to see, and there she was to be seen.

It was of her that he had come to form a judgment,--to tell himself whether she was or was not such as he had dreamed her to be.

He had not been so foolishly romantic as to have been unaware that in all probability she might have grown up to be something very different from that which his fancy had depicted.

It might or it might not come to pass that that promise of loveliness,--of loveliness combined with innocence and full intelligence,--should be kept.