rstand
about not seeing him. He'll understand that, though I didn't say it
in so many words. You mustn't trouble about that--he'll understand.
Good-night, my darling, my beloved, my beloved! You mustn't be troubled.
I think I shouldn't mind anything very much so long as I have you "all
to myself"--as people say--to make up for your long years away from me
at college. We'll talk of what's best to do in the morning, shan't we?
And for all this pain you'll forgive your loving and devoted mother.

Isabel.

Chapter XXVII

Having finished some errands downtown, the next afternoon, George
Amberson Minafer was walking up National Avenue on his homeward way when
he saw in the distance, coming toward him, upon the same side of the
street, the figure of a young lady--a figure just under the middle
height, comely indeed, and to be mistaken for none other in the
world--even at two hundred yards. To his sharp discomfiture his heart
immediately forced upon him the consciousness of its acceleration; a
sudden warmth about his neck made him aware that he had turned red,
and then, departing, left him pale. For a panicky moment he thought of
facing about in actual flight; he had little doubt that Lucy would
meet him with no token of recognition, and all at once this probability
struck him as unendurable. And if she did not speak, was it the proper
part of chivalry to lift his hat and take the cut bareheaded? Or should
the finer gentleman acquiesce in the lady's desire for no further
acquaintance, and pass her with stony mien and eyes constrained forward?
George was a young man badly flustered.

But the girl approaching him was unaware of his trepidation, being
perhaps somewhat preoccupied with her own. She saw only that he was
pale, and that his eyes were darkly circled. But here he was advantaged
with her, for the finest touch to his good looks was given by this
toning down; neither pallor nor dark circles detracting from them, but
rather adding to them a melancholy favour of distinction. George had
retained his mourning, a tribute completed down to the final details of
black gloves and a polished ebony cane (which he would have been pained
to name otherwise than as a "walking-stick") and in the aura of this
sombre elegance his straight figure and drawn face were not without a
tristful and appealing dignity.

In everything outward he was cause enough for a girl's cheek to flush,
her heart to beat faster, and her eyes to warm