k I'd better go and hurry her up."

"Please don't--unless you are particularly anxious to get rid of me."

"I thought you seemed particularly anxious to escape," she said coldly.
"And, as a family, we have certainly taken up quite enough of your time
for one day."

"That is not the way you used to talk at St. Luc!" he said.

"At St. Luc? Perhaps not. But in London everything is so different, you
see."

"Very different."

"When one meets people abroad who--who seem at all inclined to be
sociable," she continued, "one is so apt to think them pleasanter than
they really are. Then one meets them again, and--and wonders what one
ever saw to like in them. And it's no use pretending one feels the same,
because they generally understand sooner or later. Don't you find that?"

"I do, indeed," he said, wincing, "though I don't know what I've done to
deserve that you should tell me so!"

"Oh, I was not blaming you. You have been most angelic. I can't think
how papa could have expected you to take all that trouble for
him--still, you did, though you must have simply hated it."

"But, good heavens! don't you know I should be only too delighted to be
of the least service to him--or to any of you?"

"You looked anything but delighted when you came in just now; you looked
as if your one idea was to get it over as soon as you could. You know
perfectly well you're longing now for mother to finish her letter and
set you free. Do you really think I can't see that?"

"If all that is true, or partly true," said Horace, "can't you guess
why?"

"I guessed how it was when you called here first that afternoon. Mamma
had asked you to, and you thought you might as well be civil; perhaps
you really did think it would be pleasant to see us again--but it wasn't
the same thing. Oh, I saw it in your face directly--you became
conventional and distant and horrid, and it made me horrid too; and you
went away determined that you wouldn't see any more of us than you could
help. That's why I was so furious when I heard that papa had been to see
you, and with such an object."

All this was so near the truth, and yet missed it with such perverse
ingenuity, that Horace felt bound to put himself right.

"Perhaps I ought to leave things as they are," he said, "but I can't.
It's no earthly use, I know; but may I tell you why it really was
painful to me to meet you again? I thought _you_ were changed, that you
wished to forget, and wished me to for