ough keen inquiry that made my cheeks tingle with inexpressible
emotions.

'I believe not,' I answered. 'Certainly not, if others are as little
changed as I.' Her face glowed in sympathy with mine.

'And you really did not mean to call?' she exclaimed.

'I feared to intrude.'

'To intrude!' cried she, with an impatient gesture. 'What--' but as if
suddenly recollecting her aunt's presence, she checked herself, and,
turning to that lady, continued--'Why, aunt, this man is my brother's
close friend, and was my own intimate acquaintance (for a few short
months at least), and professed a great attachment to my boy--and when he
passes the house, so many scores of miles from his home, he declines to
look in for fear of intruding!'

'Mr. Markham is over-modest,' observed Mrs. Maxwell.

'Over-ceremonious rather,' said her niece--'over--well, it's no matter.'
And turning from me, she seated herself in a chair beside the table, and
pulling a book to her by the cover, began to turn over the leaves in an
energetic kind of abstraction.

'If I had known,' said I, 'that you would have honoured me by remembering
me as an intimate acquaintance, I most likely should not have denied
myself the pleasure of calling upon you, but I thought you had forgotten
me long ago.'

'You judged of others by yourself,' muttered she without raising her eyes
from the book, but reddening as she spoke, and hastily turning over a
dozen leaves at once.

There was a pause, of which Arthur thought he might venture to avail
himself to introduce his handsome young setter, and show me how
wonderfully it was grown and improved, and to ask after the welfare of
its father Sancho. Mrs. Maxwell then withdrew to take off her things.
Helen immediately pushed the book from her, and after silently surveying
her son, his friend, and his dog for a few moments, she dismissed the
former from the room under pretence of wishing him to fetch his last new
book to show me. The child obeyed with alacrity; but I continued
caressing the dog. The silence might have lasted till its master's
return, had it depended on me to break it; but, in half a minute or less,
my hostess impatiently rose, and, taking her former station on the rug
between me and the chimney corner, earnestly exclaimed--

'Gilbert, what is the matter with you?--why are you so changed? It is a
very indiscreet question, I know,' she hastened to add: 'perhaps a very
rude one--don't answer it if you think