"I have a mind to become acquainted with your handsome friend--will you introduce me, Allan? I think I should like to go and see her this afternoon."
"Do go, do go, Elinor--you don't know what a good creature she is; and old blind Margaret, you will like _her_ very much."
His sister promised to accompany him after dinner; and they parted. Allan gathered no more peaches, but hastily cropping a few roses to fling into his basket, went away with it half-filled, being impatient to announce to Rosamund the coming of her promised visitor.
When Allan returned home, he found an invitation had been left for him, in his absence, to spend that evening with a young friend, who had just quitted a public school in London, and was come to pass one night in his father's house at Widford, previous to his departure the next morning for Edinburgh University.
It was Allan's bosom friend--they had not met for some months--and it was probable a much longer time must intervene before they should meet again.
Yet Allan could not help looking a little blank when he first heard of the invitation. This was to have been an important evening. But Elinor soon relieved her brother by expressing her readiness to go alone to the cottage.
"I will not lose the pleasure I promised myself, whatever you may determine upon, Allan; I will go by myself rather than be disappointed."
Elinor promised to go--and I believe, Allan, on a second thought, was not very sorry to be spared the awkwardness of introducing two persons to each other, both so dear to him, but either of whom might happen not much to fancy the other.
At times, indeed, he was confident that Elinor _must_ love Rosamund, and Rosamund _must_ love Elinor; but there were also times in which he felt misgivings--it was an event he could scarce hope for very joy!
Allan's _real presence_ that evening was more at the cottage than at the house, where his _bodily semblance_ was visiting--his friend could not help complaining of a certain absence of mind, a _coldness_ he called it.
It might have been expected, and in the course of things predicted, that Allan would have asked his friend some questions of what had happened since their last meeting, what his feelings were on leaving school, the probable time when they should meet again, and a, hundred natural questions which friendship is most lavish of at such times; but nothing of all this ever occurred to Allan--they did not even settle the method of their future correspondence.