y unaltered. When
during an entire evening he sat almost motionless and often quite
speechless, listening to Mrs. Long's conversation with others, Ellen's
face never changed. She could not have seemed more unconscious if she had
been blind. There were many bonds of sympathy between John Gray and Emma
Long, which had never existed between him and his wife. They were both
passionately fond of art, and had studied it. Ellen's taste was
undeveloped, and her instinctive likings those of a child. But she
listened with apparent satisfaction and pleasure to long hours of
conversation, about statues, pictures, principles of art, of which she was
as unable to speak as one of her own babies would have been. Mrs. Long
was also a woman who understood affairs; and one of her great charms to
men of mind was the clear, logical, and yet picturesque and piquant way in
which she talked of men and events. Ellen listened and laughed as heartily
as any member of the circle at her repartee, her brilliant
characterization, her off-hand description.

To John Gray all this was a new revelation. He had never known this sort
of woman. That a woman could be clever as men are clever, and also be
graceful, adorned, and tender with womanliness, he had not supposed.

Ah, poor Emma Long! not all my loyalty to my sister ever quite stifled in
my heart the question whether there was not in Mrs. Long's nature
something which John Gray really needed--something which Ellen,
affectionate, wise, upright, womanly woman as she was, could never give to
any man.

The winter wore on. Idle and malicious tongues grew busier and busier.
Nothing except the constant presence of my sister wherever her husband and
Mrs. Long were seen together, prevented the scandal from taking the most
offensive shape. But Ellen was so wise, so watchful, that not even the
most malignant gossip-monger, could point to anything like a clandestine
intercourse between the two.

In fact, they met so constantly either in Mrs. Long's house or my
sister's, that there was small opportunity for them to meet elsewhere. I
alone knew that on many occasions when Mrs. Long was spending the evening
at our house, Ellen availed herself of one excuse and another to leave
them alone for a great part of the time. But she did this so naturally,
that is, with such perfect art, that not until long afterward did I know
that it had been intentional. This was one great reason of my silence
during all these months