here as if she were preparing herself to hear an expected insult.
Apollonius went up to her and took her hand, which at first she seemed
to want to draw away and then allowed to lie motionless in his. He was
glad to greet his sister-in-law. He begged her not to be displeased at
his coming and hoped by earnest endeavor to conquer the unmistakable
dislike that she felt for him.

* * * * *

However considerate and courteous were the terms in which he clothed
his pleading and hope, yet he expressed both only in thought. That
everything was just as he had imagined it and yet so entirely
different robbed him of all ease and courage.

His brother put a welcome end to the painful pause, for his wife did
not utter a syllable in reply. He pointed to the children. They were
still crowding, unconfused by all that oppressed their elders and
which they did not notice or understand, about their new uncle; and he
was glad of the opportunity to bend down to them and to have to answer
a thousand questions.

"They're a forward brood," said their father. He pointed to the
children, but he looked furtively at his wife. "For all that I'm
surprised to see how soon you have become acquainted--and intimate at
once," he added. Perchance he continued his last remark in thought:
"it seems that you know how to become intimate quickly and to make
others intimate with you!" A shade as of anxiety spread over his red
face. But his anxiety was not about the children; otherwise he would
have looked at the children and not at his wife.

Apollonius was talking more and more eagerly to the children. He had
failed to hear the remark or he did not want to let the angry woman
know whose face he carried so vividly within him. He would have
recognized the little ones, if they had met him by chance, as his
brother's children by their resemblance to their mother. But the
question how they had become so quickly intimate with him ought to
have been put to old Valentine. It was he who had been continually
telling them about the uncle who was soon coming to see them--perhaps
only so as to be able to talk with some one about what he liked to
talk of so much. The brother and the sister-in-law avoided such
conversations, and the father did not make himself familiar enough
with the old fellow to talk with him about matters which might give
him an excuse to drop into any kind of intimacy. Old Valentine would
also have been able to say t