; and the only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome face. That was exactly present to me⁠—by which I mean the face was⁠—when, on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations and coming into view of the house. What arrested me on the spot⁠—and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed for⁠—was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand there!⁠—but high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted me. This tower was one of a pair⁠—square, incongruous, crenelated structures⁠—that were distinguished, for some reason, though I could see little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was already a respectable past. I admired them, had fancies about them, for we could all profit in a degree, especially when they loomed through the dusk, by the grandeur of their actual battlements; yet it was not at such an elevation that the figure I had so often invoked seemed most in place.