"_A breathing sigh, a sigh for answer,
A little talking of outward things._"

JEAN INGELOW

Ah, the weeks that followed! People ate and drank and slept, lived and
loved and hated, were born and died,--the same world that it had been a
little while before, yet not the same to them,--never to seem quite the
same again. A little cloud had fallen between them and it, and changed
to their eyes all its proportions and hues.

They were incessantly together, riding, or driving, or walking, looking
at pictures, dancing at parties, listening to opera or play.

"It seems to me Will is going it at a pretty tremendous pace somewhere,"
said Mr. Surrey to his wife, one morning, after this had endured for a
space. "It would be well to look into it, and to know something of this
girl."

"You are right," she replied. "Yet I have such absolute faith in
Willie's fine taste and sense that I feel no anxiety."

"Nor I; yet I shall investigate a bit to-night at Augusta's."

"Clara tells me that when Miss Ercildoune understood it was to be a
great party, she insisted on ending her visit, or, at least, staying for
a while with her aunt, but they would not hear of it."

"Mrs. Lancaster goes back to England soon?"

"Very soon."

"Does any one know aught of Miss Ercildoune's family save that Mrs.
Lancaster is her aunt?"

"If 'any one' means me, I understand her father to be a gentleman of
elegant leisure,--his home near Philadelphia; a widower, with one other
child,--a son, I believe; that his wife was English, married abroad;
that Mrs. Lancaster comes here with the best of letters, and, for
herself, is most evidently a lady."

"Good. Now I shall take a survey of the young lady herself."

When night came, and with it a crowd to Mrs. Russell's rooms, the
opportunity offered for the survey, and it was made scrutinizingly.
Surrey was an only son, a well-beloved one, and what concerned him was
investigated with utmost care.

Scrutinizingly and satisfactorily. They were dancing, his sunny head
bent till it almost touched the silky blackness of her hair. "Saxon and
Norman," said somebody near who was watching them; "what a delicious
contrast!"

"They make an exquisite picture," thought the mother, as she looked
with delight and dread: delight at the beauty; dread that fills the soul
of any mother when she feels that she no longer holds her boy,--that his
life has another keeper,--and queries, "What of the keeper?"

"Well?"