nights. She almost smiled at the contrast
to the brilliant, flashing-eyed, nut-brown maid in the scarlet-wreathed
coronal of raven hair, whom she had seen the last time she cared to cast
a look in that glass.

'I am glad I am altered,' said she, sternly. 'It is well that I should
not remind him of her on whom he wasted his hope and affection. It is
plain that I shall never marry, and this is a mask under which I
can meet him with indifference like his own. Yes, it was absolute
indifference--nothing but his ordinary kindliness and humanity; neither
embarrassment nor confusion--just as he would have met any old woman at
Brogden.

If he remembers that time at all, it is as a past delusion, and there
is nothing in me to recall what he once liked. He did not know me!
Nonsense! I thought I was content only to know him safe from Jane--still
his real self. I am. That is joy! All the rest is folly and selfishness.
That marriage! How disgusting--and what crooked ways! But what is that
to me? Jane may marry the whole world, so that Percy is Percy!'

The children were heard on the stairs, and Helen rushed in, shouting,
in spite of the silencing finger, 'Aunt, it is the owl man!' and Johnnie
himself, eager and joyous, 'It is the man who came with papa.'

'He met us,' said Helen. 'He knew my name, and he asked Annie's, and
carried her to our door.'

'He said he had been into papa's room,' said Johnnie, 'and had seen
baby. He is a very good-natured gentleman. Don't you like him, Aunt
Theodora?'

'And oh! aunt, he asked me whether we ever went to Brogden; and when he
heard that we had been at the parsonage, he said he lived there when
he was a little boy, and our nursery was his;' chattered on Helen. 'He
asked if we were in the fire; and you know Johnnie can't bear to hear of
that; so I told him how funny it was when you came and pulled me out
of bed, and we went down the garden with no shoes. And he asked whether
that was the way you had grown so ugly, Aunt Theodora.'

'No, Helen, he did not say that; for he was a gentleman,' interposed
Johnnie; 'he only said he was afraid our aunt had been a sufferer, and
Sarah told--'

'And I told,' again broke in Helen, 'how Cousin Hugh said it was an
honour and a glory to be burnt like you; and I told him how I got the
water and should have put out the fire, if that horrid Simmonds had not
carried me away, and I wish he had not. So long as I had not my curls
burnt off,' said Miss Helen,