He took it up eagerly, and was tearing the envelope when his eye fell on something that stayed his hand.
The wide-open window offered a view over the garden at the back of the house, and on the lawn he saw a little group of ladies.

Seated in basket chairs, Mrs.Hannaford and her daughter were conversing with a third person whom Piers did not know, a tall, fair-faced girl who stood before them and seemed at this moment to be narrating some lively story.

Even had her features been hidden, the attitude of this stranger, her admirable form and rapid, graceful gestures, must have held the young man's attention; seeing her with the light full on her countenance, he gazed and gazed, in sudden complete forgetfulness of his half-opened letter.

Just so had he stood before the print shop in London this morning, with the same wide eyes, the same hurried breathing; rapt, self-oblivious.
He remembered.

The Hannafords' relative, Miss Derwent, was expected to-day; and Miss Derwent, doubtless, he beheld.
The next moment it occurred to him that his observation, within earshot of the group, was a sort of eavesdropping; he closed his window and turned away.