But whether she was thinking of him at that moment God only knows.
The household was informed that its master would not return that evening after all; that no date was fixed for his coming.
Later on Pinker, the guardian of the hearth, finding those fragments of letters tried to put them together again.

Tyson's letter it was impossible to restore.

It had been torn to atoms in a vicious fury of destruction.

But by great good luck Stanistreet's (a mere note) had been more tenderly dealt with.

It was torn in four neat pieces; the text, though corrupt, was fairly legible, and left little to the ingenuity of the scholiast.