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e habit from papa, but I have not the least inclination to use the name to his face." "I should think not, Leslie;" and the conversation dropped. Presently the stranger entered deliberately; a tall, fair, handsome man of eight-and-thirty or forty, with one of those cold, intellectual, statuesque faces in which there is a chill harmony, and which are types of a calm temperament, or an extinct volcano. Perhaps it was that cast of countenance which recommended him to the Bowers; yet Leslie was dark, bright, and variable. The visitor brought a gift in his hand--a basket of flowers and summer fruit, of which Leslie relieved him, while she struggled in vain to look politely obliged, and not irrationally elated. "So kind of you to trouble yourself! Such a beautiful flower--wild roses and hawthorn too--I like so much to have them, though they wither very soon. I dare say they grew where 'Fairies light On Cassilis Downans dance.' (Burns was becoming famous, and Leslie had picked up the lines somewhere.) And the strawberries, oh, they must be from Ferndean." The bearer nodded and smiled. "I knew it by instinct," and Leslie began eating them like a tempted child, and stained her pretty lips. "Those old rows on each side of the summer-house where papa first learnt his lessons--I wonder if there are jackdaws there still: won't you have some?" "No, thank you. What a memory you have, Miss Bower!" "Ferndean is my Highland hill. When papa is very stiff and helpless from rheumatism, he talks of it sometimes. It is so long ago; he was so different then." Mr. Garret and Mrs. Bower exchanged a few civil words on his journey, the spring weather, the state of the war, like two taciturn people who force their speeches; then he became Leslie's property, sat down beside her, watched her arranging her flowers, helped her a little, and spoke now and then in answer to her questions, and that was sufficient. Hector Garret was particularly struck this evening with the incongruity of Leslie's presence in the Professor's dry, silent, scholastic home, and with her monotonous, shaded existence, and her want of natural associations and fitting companionship. He pondered upon her future; he was well acquainted with her prospects; he knew much better than she did that the money with which his father had bought up the mortgages on Ferndean, and finally the estate itself, was drained and scattered long ago, and th
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