still lying back upon the sofa, and looking up; as he had been half an
hour before when she was herself conversing with him. If the spasms had
not ceased altogether, they were at least conquered by the will and
concealed from the eyes of the Colonel, as they had not been from hers.
The young girl thought she could detect, too, upon the face of the
invalid, a less hopeless look, and some evidence of more determined
insight in the glance, than she had marked for a considerable period.
Colonel Egbert Crawford was sitting with his chair drawn up reasonably
close in front of his cousin, and conversing eagerly with him, yet with
his face partially turned away most of the time, and not meeting his
gaze directly as most honest and earnest men do the observation of those
with whom they converse on important subjects. Perhaps that disposition
of the Colonel's face gave both his seen and his unseen listeners better
opportunities for close study of his expression than they might
otherwise have enjoyed.

"I am sorry to say that things are _not_ as we both wish them to be, at
West Falls," the young girl heard the Colonel say. "Of course I am not
less anxious than yourself to have everything arranged and the
property--"

"Ah, there is some _property_ involved, then! and at West Falls, of all
the places in the world!" commented the uninvited listener, speaking to
herself, and with her words very carefully kept between her teeth, as
was becoming under such circumstances--always provided there could be
anything "becoming" about the affair.

"Uncle John," the Colonel went on to say, "seems to have imbibed some
kind of singular prejudice against your mode of life in the city, if not
against you, and Mary--"

"Humph! there is a 'Mary'--a woman in the case, as well as the
property," commented the listener. "Little while as I have been here,
the thing already begins to grow interesting!"

"Well, Mary? what of her? Why does she answer my letters no more?" asked
the invalid, calming his voice by an evidently strong effort and
speaking as the Colonel paused for an instant. "Does she too begin to
share so bitterly in the--in the--"

"In the prejudice? I am sorry to say--yes," the Colonel went on, "though
I do not think that either of them could give a reason. I tried to probe
the matter a little when there, but the old gentleman answered me so
shortly that I had no excuse to go on; and Mary--"

"You did not say anything to _her_?" broke i