Phoebe, Junior by Margaret Oliphant

Now here was a business! The typical Anglican and the typical Dissenter, as Phoebe said, with only that clever young woman to keep them from flying at each other's throats; the one obstinately holding his place by her side (and Phoebe began to have a slight consciousness that, being without any chaperon, she ought not to have kept Reginald May at her side; but in the Tozer world, who knew anything of chaperons? ), the other advancing steadily, coming up the Lane out of the glow of the sunset, showing square against it in his frock-coat and high hat, formal and demagogical, not like his rival. The situation pleased Phoebe, who liked to "manage; " but it slightly frightened her as well, though the open door behind, and the long garden with its clouds of crocuses, was a city of refuge always within reach.

"Is it really you, Mr. Northcote? " she said. "You look as if you had dropped out of that lovely sunset I have been watching so long -- and I thought you were at the other end of the world."