new
instinctively that he wanted to efface his satirical words from my
memory. 'Things had gone wrong somehow,--for this world of ours is a
mighty muddle sometimes.' And here he gave an impatient sigh. 'It is a
relief to human nature to vent one's spleen on the first handy person
that crosses one's path, and, pardon me for saying so, you were just a
little aggressive yourself,' looking at me rather dubiously, as though
he were not quite sure how I should take this hit. My conscience told me
that I had been far from peaceable; on the contrary, I had been decidedly
cross; not that I would confess that this was the case, so I only
returned mildly that I considered that he had been hard on me that day,
and had handled my pet theory very roughly.

'Come, now you are talking like a reasonable woman, and I will plead
guilty to some severity. Let me own that I distrusted you, Miss Garston.
I have a horror of gush, and what I call the working mania of young
ladies, and you had not proved to me then that you could work. At the
present day, if a girl is restless and bad-tempered, and cannot get on
with her own people, she takes up hospital-nursing, and a rare muddle she
makes of it sometimes. I own hospital work is better than the convent of
the Middle Ages, where the troublesome young ladies were safely immured;
but, as I said before, I distrust the hysterical restlessness of the
age.'

'No doubt you have a fair amount of argument on your side,' I replied,
so meekly that he looked at me, and then got up from his chair and said
hastily that I was tired, and he was thoughtless to keep me waiting for
my tea.

'Let me give you some, while you tell me about the case,' was my
hospitable reply; for, though I felt no special desire to prolong our
_tete-a-tete_, mere civility prompted my offer.

He hesitated, then, to my surprise, sat down again, and said he would be
very much obliged if I would give him a cup of tea, as he was tired too,
and had to go farther and keep his dinner waiting.

I went out of the room to remove my hat and speak to Mrs. Barton. When
I came back he was standing before Charlie's photograph, and evidently
studying it with some attention, but he made no remark about it; and I
told him of my own accord that it was the portrait of my twin-brother,
who had died two years ago.

'Indeed! There is no likeness; at least I should not have known it was
your brother. This is often the case between relations,' he contin