conversation? Would that that
excellent rule which had been the guide of her young ladyhood had
curtailed the conversational propensities of mine! I thought of the
three degrees of intimacy with a shudder. Why had we not been
satisfied with discussing the merits of the song?

"We had gone on to talk of him and his homes, and as if that were not
enough, had proceeded further to me and mine. I got red as I sat
listening to some civil chat from Mr. Ward the curate (eminently in
the most innocent stage of the first degree), and trying to recall
what we had not spoken of in connection with that Home which had been
so beloved of both of us, and that Ivan whose lilies I had tended for
years.

"I grew nearly frantic as I thought that he must think that I had
known who he was, and wildly indignant with the fancy for small
mysteries which had kept Miss Brooke from telling us whom we were
going to meet.

"At last the evening came to an end. I was cloaking myself in the hall
when the merchant came up and offered his help, which I declined. But
he did not go, and stood so that I could not help seeing a distressed
look in his eyes, and the nervous way in which he was turning the blue
ring upon his finger.

"'I have so wanted to speak to you again,' he said. 'I wanted to
say--'

"But at this moment I caught Miss Martha's eye in the parlour doorway,
and, dropping a hasty curtsey, I ran to my father.

"'A very nice young fellow,' my father observed, as I took his arm
outside; 'a superior, sensible, well informed gentleman, such as you
don't meet with every day.'

"I felt quite unequal to answering the remark, and he went on:

"'What funny little ways your old friends have, my dear, to be sure.
Considering how few strangers come to the place, it would have been
natural for them to tell us all about the one they asked us to meet;
and as they had known both him and us, as tenants of Reka Dom, it was
doubly natural that they should speak of him to us, and of us to him.
But he told me that we were just the people present of whom he had not
heard a word. He seems both fond of them and to appreciate their
little oddities. He told me he remembers, as a boy, that they never
would call him Ivan, which is as much his name as any by which a man
was ever baptized. They thought it might give him a tendency to
affectation to bear so singular a name in England. They always called
him John, and keep up the discipline still. When he arrived ye