him with
so much _empressement_. They sat down, and she immediately began to talk
to him. A flattering hope that he had known of her presence, and had
come at once to see her, gave her just the degree of excitement that she
wanted to enable her to produce her thoughts at their best; while he,
accustomed by experience to caution, and not ready yet to commit
himself, longed to remark that he had been surprised as well as pleased
to see her. But he found no opportunity at first to do it; and in the
meantime Emily sat and looked on, and listened to their conversation
with an air of easy _insouciance_ very natural and becoming to her.
Emily was seven-and-twenty, and had always been accustomed to defer to
Miss Fairbairn as much older as well as wiser than herself; and this
deference did not seem out of place, for the large, fair spinster made
the young matron look slender and girlish.

John Mortimer remembered how Emily had said a year ago that he could not
do better than marry Justina. He thought she had invited her there to
that end; and as he talked he took care to express to her by looks his
good-humoured defiance; whereupon she defended herself with her eyes,
and punished him by saying--

"I thought you would come to-day perhaps and see my little house. Do you
like it, John? I have been in it less than three months, and I am
already quite attached to it. Miss Fairbairn only came last night, and
she is delighted with it."

"Yes," said Justina, "I only came last night;" and an air of
irrepressible satisfaction spread itself over her face--that Mr. Mortimer
should have walked over to see her this very first morning was beyond
her utmost hopes. She had caused Emily to invite her at that particular
time that she might often see John; and here he was.

"Emily thinks it a pointed thing, my coming at once," he cogitated. "She
reminds me, too, that friendship for her did not bring me. Well, I was
too much out of spirits to come a month ago."

Emily's eyes flashed and softened when she saw him out of countenance,
and a little twist came in her lips where a smile would like to have
broken through. She was still in crape, and wore the delicate gossamer
of her widow's cap, with long, wing-like streamers falling away at her
back; and while she sat at work on a cumbersome knitted shawl she
listened with an air of docility to Justina's conversation, without
noticing that a touch of dismay was beginning to show itself in John's
fa