ies were as loud in her praises as Arthur Barville himself.
Lord Montbarry declared that she was the only perfectly pretty woman he
had ever seen, who was really unconscious of her own attractions. The
old nurse said she looked as if she had just stepped out of a picture,
and wanted nothing but a gilt frame round her to make her complete.
Miss Haldane, on her side, returned from her first visit to the
Montbarrys charmed with her new acquaintances. Later on the same day,
Arthur called with an offering of fruit and flowers for Mrs. Carbury,
and with instructions to ask if she was well enough to receive Lord and
Lady Montbarry and Miss Lockwood on the morrow. In a week's time, the
two households were on the friendliest terms. Mrs. Carbury, confined
to the sofa by a spinal malady, had been hitherto dependent on her
niece for one of the few pleasures she could enjoy, the pleasure of
having the best new novels read to her as they came out. Discovering
this, Arthur volunteered to relieve Miss Haldane, at intervals, in the
office of reader. He was clever at mechanical contrivances of all
sorts, and he introduced improvements in Mrs. Carbury's couch, and in
the means of conveying her from the bedchamber to the drawing-room,
which alleviated the poor lady's sufferings and brightened her gloomy
life. With these claims on the gratitude of the aunt, aided by the
personal advantages which he unquestionably possessed, Arthur advanced
rapidly in the favour of the charming niece. She was, it is needless
to say, perfectly well aware that he was in love with her, while he was
himself modestly reticent on the subject--so far as words went. But
she was not equally quick in penetrating the nature of her own feelings
towards Arthur. Watching the two young people with keen powers of
observation, necessarily concentrated on them by the complete seclusion
of her life, the invalid lady discovered signs of roused sensibility in
Miss Haldane, when Arthur was present, which had never yet shown
themselves in her social relations with other admirers eager to pay
their addresses to her. Having drawn her own conclusions in private,
Mrs. Carbury took the first favourable opportunity (in Arthur's
interests) of putting them to the test.

'I don't know what I shall do,' she said one day, 'when Arthur goes
away.'

Miss Haldane looked up quickly from her work. 'Surely he is not going
to leave us!' she exclaimed.

'My dear! he has already stayed at his uncl