作者：Wilkie Collins 字数：16.8万字

On the tenth the work was proceeding bravely. Toward noon Owen and I strolled to the door to enjoy the fine autumn sunshine. We were sitting lazily on our favorite bench in front of the tower when we were startled by a shout from above us. Looking up directly, we saw Morgan half in and half out of his narrow window In the seventh story, gesticulating violently with the stem of his long meerschaum pipe in the direction of the road below us. We gazed eagerly in the quarter thus indicated, but our low position prevented us for some time from seeing anything. At last we both discerned an old yellow post-chaise distinctly and indisputably approaching us. Owen and I looked at one another in panic-stricken silence. It was coming to us -- and what did it contain? Do pianos travel in chaises? Are boxes of novels conveyed to their destination by a postilion? We expected the piano and expected the novels, but nothing else -- unquestionably nothing else. The chaise took the turn in the road, passed through the gateless gap in our rough enclosure-wall of loose stone, and rapidly approached us. A bonnet appeared at the window and a hand gaily waved a white handkerchief. Powers of caprice, confusion, and dismay It was Jessie Yelverton herself -- arriving, without a word of warning, exactly ten days before her time.

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