kindly received, but always declined. Nobody could
read to him so well as Miss Boyle. Nobody else understood his moods, his
humors, his whims; she knew his tastes with ominous exactness. It was she
who arranged his meals on the salver with such care and grace, nay, even
cooked them at times; for Jo believed, like a rational woman, that
intellect and cultivation increase one's capacity for every office,--that
a woman of intelligence should be able to excel an ignorant servant in
every household duty, by just so much as she excels her in mind. In fact,
this was a pleasant life to two persons, but harassing enough for me. Had
I been confident of Arthur Waring's integrity, I should have regarded him
with friendly and cordial interest; but I had every reason to distrust
him. I perceived he had so far insinuated himself into Jo's confidence,
that his whole artillery of expressive looks, broken sentences, even
caresses, were received by her with entire good faith; but when I asked
her seriously if I was to regard Mr. Waring as her lover, she burst into
indignant denial, colored scarlet, and was half inclined to be angry with
me,--though a certain tremulous key, into which her usually sweet and
steady voice broke while she declared he had never spoken to her of love,
it was only friendship, witnessed against her that she was apprehensive,
sad, perhaps visited with a tinge of that causeless shame which even in a
pure and good woman conventionality constrains, when she has loved a man
before he says in plain English, "I love you," though every act and look
and tone of his may have carried that significance unmistakably for years.
Thank God, there is a day of sure judgment coming, when conventions and
shields of usage will save no man from the due vengeance of truth upon
falsehood, justice upon smooth and plausible duplicity!

In due time Mr. Waring recovered. If there was any change in his manner to
Jo, it was too slight to be seen, though it was felt, and was, after all,
the carelessness of a person certain of his foothold in her good graces,
rather than the evident withdrawal of attention,--which I could have
pardoned even then, had it been the result of honest regret for past
carelessness, and stern resolution to repair that past. Whatever it was,
Jo perceived that her ideal man was become a real man; but, with a
tenacity of nature, for which in my fate-telling I had not given her
credit, she was as constant to the substance as