e those fair evenings spent,--the evenings of happy
June! And then, as Maltravers suffered the children to tease him into
talk about the wonders he had seen in the regions far away, how did the
soft and social hues of his character unfold themselves! There is in all
real genius so much latent playfulness of nature it almost seems as if
genius never could grow old. The inscriptions that youth writes upon
the tablets of an imaginative mind are, indeed, never wholly
obliterated,--they are as an invisible writing, which gradually becomes
clear in the light and warmth. Bring genius familiarly with the young,
and it is as young as they are. Evelyn did not yet, therefore, observe
the disparity of _years_ between herself and Maltravers. But the
disparity of knowledge and power served for the present to interdict
to her that sweet feeling of equality in commune, without which love is
rarely a very intense affection in women. It is not so with men. But by
degrees she grew more and more familiar with her stern friend; and in
that familiarity there was perilous fascination to Maltravers. She could
laugh him at any moment out of his most moody reveries; contradict with
a pretty wilfulness his most favourite dogmas; nay, even scold him,
with bewitching gravity, if he was not always at the command of her
wishes--or caprice. At this time it seemed certain that Maltravers would
fall in love with Evelyn; but it rested on more doubtful probabilities
whether Evelyn would fall in love with him.

CHAPTER VII.

CONTRAHE vela,
Et te littoribus cymba propinqua vehat.*--SENECA.

* "Furl your sails, and let the next boat carry you to the shore."

"HAS not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance?" said Mr. Merton to
Maltravers, as Evelyn, unconscious of the compliment, sat at a little
distance, bending down her eyes to Sophy, who was weaving daisy-chains
on a stool at her knee, and whom she was telling not to talk loud,--for
Merton had been giving Maltravers some useful information respecting the
management of his estate; and Evelyn was already interested in all that
could interest her friend. She had one excellent thing in woman,
had Evelyn Cameron: despite her sunny cheerfulness of temper she was
_quiet_; and she had insensibly acquired, under the roof of her musing
and silent mother, the habit of never disturbing others. What a blessed
secret is that in the intercourse of domestic life!

"Has not Miss Cameron a bea