e habit from papa, but I have not the least
inclination to use the name to his face."

"I should think not, Leslie;" and the conversation dropped.

Presently the stranger entered deliberately; a tall, fair, handsome man
of eight-and-thirty or forty, with one of those cold, intellectual,
statuesque faces in which there is a chill harmony, and which are types
of a calm temperament, or an extinct volcano. Perhaps it was that cast
of countenance which recommended him to the Bowers; yet Leslie was dark,
bright, and variable.

The visitor brought a gift in his hand--a basket of flowers and summer
fruit, of which Leslie relieved him, while she struggled in vain to look
politely obliged, and not irrationally elated.

"So kind of you to trouble yourself! Such a beautiful flower--wild roses
and hawthorn too--I like so much to have them, though they wither very
soon. I dare say they grew where

'Fairies light
On Cassilis Downans dance.'

(Burns was becoming famous, and Leslie had picked up the lines
somewhere.) And the strawberries, oh, they must be from Ferndean."

The bearer nodded and smiled.

"I knew it by instinct," and Leslie began eating them like a tempted
child, and stained her pretty lips. "Those old rows on each side of the
summer-house where papa first learnt his lessons--I wonder if there are
jackdaws there still: won't you have some?"

"No, thank you. What a memory you have, Miss Bower!"

"Ferndean is my Highland hill. When papa is very stiff and helpless from
rheumatism, he talks of it sometimes. It is so long ago; he was so
different then."

Mr. Garret and Mrs. Bower exchanged a few civil words on his journey,
the spring weather, the state of the war, like two taciturn people who
force their speeches; then he became Leslie's property, sat down beside
her, watched her arranging her flowers, helped her a little, and spoke
now and then in answer to her questions, and that was sufficient.

Hector Garret was particularly struck this evening with the incongruity
of Leslie's presence in the Professor's dry, silent, scholastic home,
and with her monotonous, shaded existence, and her want of natural
associations and fitting companionship. He pondered upon her future; he
was well acquainted with her prospects; he knew much better than she did
that the money with which his father had bought up the mortgages on
Ferndean, and finally the estate itself, was drained and scattered long
ago, and th