iefly when an answer
was required; but never speaking in reply with any of that free pouring
forth of heart and mind which can only take place where sympathy is
strong.

She was rewarded for her endurance, for when it had lasted well nigh as
long as she could bear it, the drawing-room door opened, and Mr. Marlow
appeared. His eyes instantly fixed upon Emily with that young man
sitting by her side; and a feeling, strange and painful, came upon him.
But the next instant the bright, glad, natural, unchecked look of
satisfaction, with which she rose to greet him, swept every doubt-making
jealousy away.

Very different was the look of Mrs. Hazleton. For an instant--a single
instant--the same black shadow, which I have mentioned once before, came
across her brow, the same lightning flashed from her eye. But both
passed away in a moment; and the feelings which produced them were again
hidden in her heart. They were bitter enough; for she had read, with the
clear eyesight of jealousy, all that Marlow's look of surprise and
annoyance--all that Emily's look of joy and relief--betrayed.

They might not yet call themselves lovers--they might not even be
conscious that they were so; but that they were and would be, from that
moment, Mrs. Hazleton had no doubt. The conviction had come upon her,
not exactly gradually, but by fits, as it were--first a doubt, and then
a fear, and then a certainty that one, and then that both loved.

If it were so, she knew that her present plans must fail; but yet she
pursued them with an eagerness very different than before--a wild, rash,
almost frantic eagerness. There was a chance, she thought, of driving
Emily into the arms of John Ayliffe, with no love for him, and love for
another; and there was a bitter sort of satisfaction in the very idea.
Fears for her father she always hoped might operate, where no other
inducement could have power, and such means she resolved to bring into
play at once, without waiting for the dull, long process of drilling
Ayliffe into gentlemanly carriage, or winning for him some way in
Emily's regard. To force her to marry him, hating rather than loving
him, would be a mighty gratification, and for it Mrs. Hazleton resolved
at once to strike; but she knew that hypocrisy was needed more than
ever; and therefore it was that the brow was smoothed, the eye calmed in
a moment.

To Marlow, during his visit, she was courteous and civil enough, but
still so far cold as to g