ittle more sharpness of edge than her youthful texture
had promised. But the side she turned to her friend was still all
softness--had in it a hint of the old pliancy, the impulse to lean and
enlace, that at once woke in Justine the corresponding instinct of
guidance and protection, so that their first kiss, before a word was
spoken, carried the two back to the precise relation in which their
school-days had left them. So easy a reversion to the past left no room
for the sense of subsequent changes by which such reunions are sometimes
embarrassed. Justine's sympathies had, instinctively, and almost at
once, transferred themselves to Bessy's side--passing over at a leap
the pained recognition that there _were_ sides already--and Bessy had
gathered up Justine into the circle of gentle self-absorption which left
her very dimly aware of any distinctive characteristic in her friends
except that of their affection for herself--since she asked only, as she
appealingly put it, that they should all be "dreadfully fond" of her.

"And I've wanted you so often, Justine: you're the only clever person
I'm not afraid of, because your cleverness always used to make things
clear instead of confusing them. I've asked so many people about
you--but I never heard a word till just the other day--wasn't it
odd?--when our new doctor at Rushton happened to say that he knew you.
I've been rather unwell lately--nervous and tired, and sleeping
badly--and he told me I ought to keep perfectly quiet, and be under the
care of a nurse who could make me do as she chose: just such a nurse as
a wonderful Miss Brent he had known at St. Elizabeth's, whose patients
obeyed her as if she'd been the colonel of a regiment. His description
made me laugh, it reminded me so much of the way you used to make me do
what you wanted at the convent--and then it suddenly occurred to me that
I had heard of you having gone in for nursing, and we compared notes,
and I found it was really you! Wasn't it odd that we should discover
each other in that way? I daresay we might have passed in the street
and never known it--I'm sure I must be horribly changed...."

Thus Bessy discoursed, in the semi-isolation to which, under an
overarching beech-tree, the discretion of their hostess had allowed the
two friends to withdraw for the freer exchange of confidences. There
was, at first sight, nothing in her aspect to bear out Mrs. Amherst's
plaintive allusion to her health, but Justine,