d man, who was talking and laughing excitably at the top of
his voice. Miss Milroy ran indoors to warn her father of Mr. Armadale's
arrival, and to add that he was bringing with him a noisy stranger, who
was, in all probability, the friend generally reported to be staying
with the squire at the great house.

Had the major's daughter guessed right? Was the squire's loud-talking,
loud-laughing companion the shy, sensitive Midwinter of other times? It
was even so. In Allan's presence, that morning, an extraordinary change
had passed over the ordinarily quiet demeanor of Allan's friend.

When Midwinter had first appeared in the breakfast-room, after putting
aside Mr. Brock's startling letter, Allan had been too much occupied to
pay any special attention to him. The undecided difficulty of choosing
the day for the audit dinner had pressed for a settlement once more,
and had been fixed at last (under the butler's advice) for Saturday,
the twenty-eighth of the month. It was only on turning round to remind
Midwinter of the ample space of time which the new arrangement allowed
for mastering the steward's books, that even Allan's flighty attention
had been arrested by a marked change in the face that confronted him.
He had openly noticed the change in his usual blunt manner, and had been
instantly silenced by a fretful, almost an angry, reply. The two had sat
down together to breakfast without the usual cordiality, and the meal
had proceeded gloomily, till Midwinter himself broke the silence by
bursting into the strange outbreak of gayety which had revealed in
Allan's eyes a new side to the character of his friend.

As usual with most of Allan's judgments, here again the conclusion was
wrong. It was no new side to Midwinter's character that now presented
itself--it was only a new aspect of the one ever-recurring struggle of
Midwinter's life.

Irritated by Allan's discovery of the change in him, and dreading the
next questions that Allan's curiosity might put, Midwinter had roused
himself to efface, by main force, the impression which his own altered
appearance had produced. It was one of those efforts which no men
compass so resolutely as the men of his quick temper and his sensitive
feminine organization. With his whole mind still possessed by the firm
belief that the Fatality had taken one great step nearer to Allan and
himself since the rector's adventure in Kensington Gardens--with his
face still betraying what he had suff