"But that night on reaching home I felt that something was going wrong. Aunt Lovell was then with us, and I saw her cast a glance of dismay upon me as I entered the room where she and Emma had been closeted together. Emma, too, looked out of sorts, and hardly spoke to me when I passed her in the hall. Indeed, that quick temper of which I have already spoken was visible in her eyes, and if I had opened my own lips I am sure she would have flashed out with some of her bitter speeches. But I was ignorant of having given her any cause for anger; so, thinking she was jealous of the acquirements which I had made in her absence, and the advantages they now gave me in any gathering where cultured people came together, I hurried by her in some disdain, and in the quiet of my own room regained the equanimity my aunt's look and Emma's manifest ill-feeling towards me had for a moment shaken. "It was the last time I was to encounter anger in that eye. When I met her next morning I discovered that some great change had passed over her. The high spirits I had always secretly deprecated were gone, and in their place behold an indescribable gentleness of manner which has never since forsaken her. "But this was not all; her attitude towards me was different. From indifference it had budded into love; and if one can become devoted in a night, then was it devotion that she showed in every look and every word she bestowed upon me from that day. The occasion for this change I did not then know; when I did, a change passed over me also. "Meantime a grave event took place. I was out walking, and my path took me by the church. I mean the one that stands by itself on the top of the hill. Perhaps you have been there, perhaps you have not. It is a lonesome-looking structure, but it has pleasant surroundings, while the view of the sea which you get from its rear is superb. I often used to go there, just for the breath of salt-water that seemed to hover about the place, and as there was a big flat stone in the very spot most favorable for observation, I was accustomed to sit there for hours with my book or pencil for company. "Had Edgar Sellick loved me he would have been acquainted with my habits. This is apparent to me now, but then I seemed to see nothing beyond my own wishes and hopes. But this does not explain what happened to me there. I was sitting on the stone of which I have spoken, and was looking at the long line of silver light on the horizon which we call the sea, when I suddenly heard voices. Two men were standing on the other side of the church, engaged, in all probability, in gazing at the landscape, but talking on a subject very remote from what they saw before them. I heard their words distinctly. They were these: "'I tell you she is beautiful.' "I did not recognize the voice making use of this phrase, but the one that answered was well known to me, and its tones went through me like a knife. "'Oh, yes, if you only see one side of her face.'