and kept his little
room less closely, though he was fearfully weak and the racking pain had
not entirely left his system. "You never liked Egbert," he said.

"No," said John, "I never liked him, a bit more than Dean Swift liked
Doctor Fell, though perhaps I could not tell _why_, any better than the
Dean."

"No, I suppose not," said Richard, musingly. And here the conversation
dropped, on that point. Whatever may have been Richard Crawford's
suspicions of his cousin, forced on him by circumstances and by the
young girl who had so strangely volunteered to disenchant him--he had no
intention of communicating them even to his brother.

If there was a mixed feeling in the meeting of the brothers, there was
one quite as complicated in that of Isabel Crawford and Marion
Hobart--two total strangers so unexpectedly flung together. Bell
Crawford was better fitted to receive and care for the orphan girl, than
she would have been a month before, when the mysterious turning-point of
her existence had not been reached; and there had been no time since she
had become the mistress of her brother's mansion, when she would not
have used every exertion to make one comfortable and happy who had been
so strangely recommended to her sympathy. What she would before have
lacked, was discipline and thoughtfulness. These she had attained to
some degree, in a manner which she could not much more comprehend than
those who surrounded her. But it was impossible that she could be able
at once to supply the double want of sister and mother to one who had
been so differently nurtured and educated as Marion Hobart; and the very
desire to be even kinder than she would have cared to be to one who had
more claims upon her, necessarily placed her in embarrassment which was
very likely to produce the opposite effect. The young Virginian girl
could not do otherwise than receive those attentions with gratitude, and
yet her very desire not to be obtrusive and not to seem to demand more
attention than was necessary, placed her in an equally anomalous
position. The two girls consequently became much less intimately
acquainted within the first few days, than they might have done if
thrown together under different auspices.

Marion Hobart was, as her conversation and conduct on the night of her
grandfather's death so plainly indicated, a most singular person, and
one who might have been studied for years without being fully
understood. She talked but little, a