r awe, if
her astonishment still occasionally obtained. Neither her aunt nor
Rainham had altered, nor had they grown perceptibly older.

Watching the latter to-day as he sat lolling back lazily, balancing
his teacup, she was curiously reminded of her first impression of
him; taking stock of her humorously, silently, in almost the same
attitude, with the same sad eyes. And since Mary, too, had remained
virtually unchanged, it is to the credit of the head of a
particularly serious little daughter of the Puritans that she had
ended by appreciating them both. In fact, she had discovered that
neither of them was so frivolous as it appeared, or, at least, that
there were visitors in Parton Street who seemed less frivolous,
and whose frivolity shocked her more. Her shy brown eyes were
penetrative, and often saw more than one would have imagined, and
at last they believed that they had seen through the philosophic
indifference of Lady Garnett's shrug, the gentle irony of Rainham's
perpetual smile, the various masks of tragic comedians on a stage
where there is no prompter, where the footlights are most pitiless,
and where the gallery is only too lavish of its cat-calls at the
smallest slip. Beneath it all she saw two people who understood each
other as well as any two persons in the world. Did they understand
each other so well that they could afford to trifle? She had an idea
that their silences were eloquent, and that they might well be
lavish of the crudity of speech. Oh, they pretended very well! The
young girl found something admirable in the hard, polished surface
which her aunt presented to the world: her rouge and her diamonds,
her little bird-like air of living only in the present, of being
intensely interested, of having no regrets--a manner to which
Rainham responded so fluently with an assumption that she was
right, that things were an excellent joke. After all, perhaps they
pretended too much; at least, she found herself often, when they
were present, falling away into reveries full of conjecture, from
which, as happened now, she only awoke with a slight blush to find
herself directly addressed.

"Wake up, Mary! we are talking of the Sylvesters. I was telling
Philip that his little friend Eve has become entirely charming."

"Yes," said Mary slowly; "she is charming, certainly. Haven't you
seen her, Philip? You used to be constantly there."

Rainham assumed the air of reflection.

"Really, I believe I used, w