Sara’s affairs were perhaps not so interesting, as indeed they were far from being so advanced, as those of Jack; but still all this time they were making progress. It was not without cause that the image of Powys stole across her mental vision when Jack warned her to look at the beam in her own eye. There could be little doubt that Mr. Brownlow had encouraged Powys. He had asked him to come generally, and he had added to this many special invitations, and sometimes, indeed, when Jack was not there, had given the young man a seat in the dog-cart, and brought him out. All this was very confusing, not to Sara, who, as she thought, saw into the motives of her father’s conduct, and knew how it was; but to the clerk in Mr. Brownlow’s office, who felt himself thus singled out, and could not but perceive that no one else had the same privilege. It filled him with many wondering and even bewildered thoughts. Perhaps at the beginning it did not strike him so much, semi-republican as he was; but he was quick-witted, and when he looked about him, and saw that his neighbors did not get the same advantages, the young Canadian felt that there must be something in it. He was taken in, as it were, to Mr. Brownlow’s heart and home, and that not without a purpose, as was told him by the angry lines in Jack’s forehead. He was taken in and admitted into the habits of intimacy, and had Sara, as it were, given over to him; and what did it mean? for that it must mean something he could not fail to see.