e house. Dick,
who had no brothers and sisters of his own, and whose parents had not
married until they were long past youth, had adopted brotherly airs
with the Challoner girls; they called each other by their Christian
names, and he reposed in them the confidences that young men are wont
to give to their belongings.

With Nan this easy familiarity had of late merged into something
different: a reserve, a timidity, a subtile suspicion of change had
crept into their intimacy. Nan felt that Dick's manner had altered,
but somehow she liked it better: his was always a sweet bountiful
nature, but now it seemed to have deepened into greater manliness.
Dick was growing older; Oxford training was polishing him. After each
one of his brief absences Nan saw a greater change, a more marked
deference, and secretly hoped that no one else noticed it. When the
young undergraduate wrote dutiful letters home the longest messages
were always for Nan; when he carried little offerings of flowers to
his young neighbors, Nan's bouquet was always the choicest; he
distinguished her, too, on all occasions by those small nameless
attentions which never fail to please.

Nan kept her own counsel, and never spoke of these things. She said
openly that Dick was very nice and very much improved, and that they
always missed him sadly during the Oxford terms; but she never
breathed a syllable that might make people suspect that this very
ordinary young man with the sandy hair was more to her than other
young men. Nevertheless Phillis and Dulce knew that such was the case,
and Mrs. Challoner understood that the most dangerous enemy to her
peace was this lively-spoken Dick.

Dick was very amusing, for he was an eloquent young fellow:
nevertheless Mrs. Challoner sighed more than once, and her attention
visibly wandered; seeing which, Dick good-humoredly left off talking,
and began inspecting the different articles in Nan's work-basket.

"I am afraid I have given your mother a headache," he said when they
were sitting round the circular table in the low, oddly-shaped
dining-room. There was a corner cut off, and the windows were in
unexpected places, which made it unlike other rooms; but Dick loved it
better than the great dining-room at Longmead; and somehow it never
had looked cosier to him than it did this evening. It was somewhat
dark, owing to the shade of the veranda: so the lamp was lighted, and
the pleasant scent of roses and lilies came throug