a low tone of
would-be reproach. "While I--I knew you at once."

"I have not forgotten," says Scrope, taking her hand and holding it,
as though unconsciously. "I was only surprised, puzzled. You are so
changed. All seems so different. A little child when last I saw you,
and now a lady grown."

"Oh, yes, I am quite grown up," says Miss Peyton, demurely. "I can't
do any more of that sort of thing, to oblige anybody,--even though
papa--who adores a Juno, and thinks all women should be divinely
tall--has often asked me to try. But," maliciously, "are you not going
to ask me how I have progressed (isn't that the right word?) with my
studies? You ought, you know, as it was you who sent me to school."

"I?" says Sir James, rather taken aback at this unexpected onslaught.

"Yes, you," repeats she, with a little nod. "Papa would never have had
the cruelty even to think of such a thing. I am glad you have still
sufficient grace left to blush for your evil conduct. Do you
remember," with a gay laugh, "what a terrible scolding I gave you
before leaving home?"

"I shall remember it to my dying day," says Sir James. "I was never so
thoroughly frightened before, or since. Then and there, I registered a
vow never again to interfere with any one's daughter."

"I hope you will keep that vow," says Miss Peyton, with innocent
malice, and a smile only half suppressed, that torments him in memory
for many a day. And then George Peyton asks some question, and
presently Sir James is telling him certain facts about the Holy Land,
and Asia generally, that rather upset his preconceived ideas.

"Yet I still believe it must be the most interesting spot on earth,"
he says, still clinging to old thoughts and settled convictions.

"Well, it's novel, you know, and the fashion, and that," says Sir
James, rather vaguely. "In fact, you are nowhere nowadays if you
haven't done the East; but it's fatiguing, there isn't a doubt. The
people aren't as nice as they might be, and honesty is not considered
the best policy out there, and dirt is the prevailing color, and
there's a horrid lot of sand."

"What a dismal ending!" says Clarissa, in a tone suggestive of
disappointment. "But how lovely it looks in pictures!--I don't mean
the sand, exactly, but the East."

"Most things do. There is an old grandaunt of mine hung in the gallery
at Scrope----"

"How shocking!" interrupted Miss Peyton, with an affected start. "And
in the house, too! So unpleasan