It was one of those cases in which two people without well knowing what they are about, go on puzzling each other, though both may be as frank as day. They talked of every simple subject which all the world might have heard discussed--music, painting, poetry; but yet the whole was carried on in so low a tone that to any one who did not know them it would have appeared that they were making love. Miss Clifford was puzzled, perplexed, to make out her companion's character, for she certainly expected nothing from a man familiarly called Ned Hayward, and more especially from a particular friend of her uncle's, but a gay, rattling, good-humoured scapegrace at the best; yet in order to gain her full attention, and withdraw her thoughts from a subject which he saw annoyed her, Captain Hayward put off for the time his usual careless, rapid manner, and spoke with so much feeling and good taste, and what is more, good sense also, upon all the many topics upon which their conversation ran--he showed her that he had read so much, and thought so much, and felt so much, that she became convinced before he had done, of the complete fallacy of all her preconceived notions of his disposition. Such a change of opinion is always very favourable to a man with a woman; for they are such generous creatures, those women, that if they find they have done one injustice, they are sure to go to the opposite extreme, and give us credit for more than is our due. Ned Hayward's puzzle was of a different kind, but it proceeded from the same source, namely, an erroneous preconception. He saw that Mary Clifford was embarrassed, whenever the subject of the attack upon their carriage was mentioned, that she changed colour, not from red to white as would have been the case, had terror had aught to do with it, but from white to red, which is generally a change produced by other emotions. He therefore set it down as a certain fact, that the fair lady's heart was a little engaged in the transaction; and yet, as they went on talking in that same low voice, she twice returned to the subject herself, not without some degree of embarrassment it is true, but still as if she wished to say more, and Ned Hayward thought with some degree of pique, "Well, my pretty friend, I am not quite old enough to be made a confidant of yet."