Frances thought it was all very natural, and exactly what she wished. She was glad, very glad that they should take to Constance; that she should make friends with all the old friends who to herself had been so tender and kind. But there was one thing in which she could not help but feel a little disappointed, disconcerted, cast down. She had looked forward to George. She had thought of this new element in the quiet village life with a pleasant flutter of her heart. It had been natural to think of him as falling more or less to her own share, partly because it would be so in the fitness of things, she being the youngest of all the society--the girl, as he would be the boy; and partly because of his mother’s fond talk, which was full of innocent hints of her hopes. That George should come when she was just going away, was bad enough; but that they should have met like this, that he should have touched her hand almost without looking at her, that he should not have had the most momentary desire to make acquaintance with Frances, whose name he must have heard so often, that gave her a real pang. To be sure, it was only a pang of the imagination. She had not fallen in love with his photograph, which did not represent an Adonis; and it was something, half a brother, half a comrade, not (consciously) a lover, for which Frances had looked in him. But yet it gave her a very strange, painful, deserted sensation when she saw him look over her head at Constance, and felt her hand dropped as soon as taken. She smiled a little at herself, when she came to think of it, saying to herself that she knew very well Constance was far more charming, far more pretty than she, and that it was only natural she should take the first place. Frances was ever anxious to yield to her the first place. But she could not help that quiver of involuntary feeling. She was hurt, though it was all so natural. It was natural, too, that she should be hurt, and that nobody should take any notice--all the most everyday things in the world.