It highly excited my curiosity; it gave me a new reason for longing to get back.
I was able to make all my arrangements, and to bid adieu to my father and my sisters on the evening of the twenty-third.

Early on the morning of the twenty-fourth, I left Paris, and reached Dimchurch in time for the final festivities in celebration of Christmas Eve.
The first hour of Christmas Day had struck on the clock in our own pretty sitting-room, before I could prevail upon Lucilla to let me rest, after my journey, in bed.

She was now once more the joyous light-hearted creature of our happier time; and she had so much to say to me, that not even her father himself (on this occasion) could have talked her down.
The next morning she paid the penalty of exciting herself over-night.
When I went into her room, she was suffering from a nervous head-ache, and was not able to rise at her usual hour.

She proposed of her own accord that I should go alone to Browndown to see Oscar on my return.

It is only doing common justice to myself to say that this was a relief to me.