m for that."

"I think," said her aunt, "it is to your brother's credit that he is
anxious about your associations."

"Oh, very much!" shouted Bessie, with a burst of laughter. "And as he
isn't practically so, I ought to have been more patient with his theory.
But when he began to scold me I lost my temper, and I gave him a few
wholesome truths in the guise of taunts. That was what made him go away,
I suppose."

"But I don't really see," her aunt pursued,--"what occasion he had to be
angry with you in this instance."

"Oh, I do!" said Bessie. "Mr. Durgin isn't one to inspire the casual
beholder with the notion of his spiritual distinction. His face is so
rude and strong, and he has such a primitive effect in his clothes, that
you feel as if you were coming down the street with a prehistoric man
that the barbers and tailors had put a 'fin de siecle' surface on." At
the mystification which appeared in her aunt's face the girl laughed
again. "I should have been quite as anxious, if I had been in Alan's
place, and I shall tell him so, sometime. If I had not been so interested
in the situation I don't believe I could have kept my courage. Whenever I
looked round, and found that prehistoric man at my elbow, it gave me the
creeps, a little, as if he were really carrying me off to his cave. I
shall try to express that to Alan."

XXXI.

The ladies finished their tea, and the butler came and took the cups
away. Miss Lynde remained silent in her chair at her end of the
library-table, and by-and-by Bessie got a book and began to read. When
her aunt woke up it was half past nine. "Was that Alan coming in?" she
asked.

"I don't think he's been out," said the girl. "It isn't late enough for
him to come in--or early enough."

"I believe I'll go to bed," Miss Lynde returned. "I feel rather drowsy."

Bessie did not smile at a comedy which was apt to be repeated every
evening that she and her aunt spent at home together; they parted for the
night with the decencies of family affection, and Bessie delivered the
elder lady over to her maid. Then the girl sank down again, and lay
musing in her deep chair before the fire with her book shut on her thumb.
She looked rather old and worn in her reverie; her face lost the air of
gay banter which, after the beauty of her queer eyes and her vivid mouth,
was its charm. The eyes were rather dull now, and the mouth was a little
withered.

She was waiting for her brother to come down,