arm. Joshua would not let her wait till she got indoors before
changing them, as she proposed, but insisted on her performing that
operation under a tree, so that they might enter as if they had not
walked. He was nervously formal about such trifles, while Rosa took the
whole proceeding--walk, dressing, dinner, and all--as a pastime. To
Joshua it was a serious step in life.

A more unexpected kind of person for a curate's sister was never
presented at a dinner. The surprise of Mrs. Fellmer was unconcealed. She
had looked forward to a Dorcas, or Martha, or Rhoda at the outside, and a
shade of misgiving crossed her face. It was possible that, had the young
lady accompanied her brother to church, there would have been no dining
at Narrobourne House that day.

Not so with the young widower, her son. He resembled a sleeper who had
awaked in a summer noon expecting to find it only dawn. He could
scarcely help stretching his arms and yawning in their faces, so strong
was his sense of being suddenly aroused to an unforeseen thing. When
they had sat down to table he at first talked to Rosa somewhat with the
air of a ruler in the land; but the woman lurking in the acquaintance
soon brought him to his level, and the girl from Brussels saw him looking
at her mouth, her hands, her contour, as if he could not quite comprehend
how they got created: then he dropped into the more satisfactory stage
which discerns no particulars.

He talked but little; she said much. The homeliness of the Fellmers, to
her view, though they were regarded with such awe down here, quite
disembarrassed her. The squire had become so unpractised, had dropped so
far into the shade during the last year or so of his life, that he had
almost forgotten what the world contained till this evening reminded him.
His mother, after her first moments of doubt, appeared to think that he
must be left to his own guidance, and gave her attention to Joshua.

With all his foresight and doggedness of aim, the result of that dinner
exceeded Halborough's expectations. In weaving his ambitions he had
viewed his sister Rosa as a slight, bright thing to be helped into notice
by his abilities; but it now began to dawn upon him that the physical
gifts of nature to her might do more for them both than nature's
intellectual gifts to himself. While he was patiently boring the tunnel
Rosa seemed about to fly over the mountain.

He wrote the next day to his brother, now occ