There had been no shyness, no hesitation, but the easy talk of a table at which strangers were constantly appearing and disappearing, and a house in which this young creature, though so young, was the mistress, and used to all the exertions necessary to set people at their ease. He had admired her he said to himself, from the first--who could help admiring her? but it had been so clearly her part to entertain and amuse the people about her, and she had been so pleasantly indifferent, so innocently at her ease, so oblivious of his presence often, so kind when her attention was called to him, that all those little bulwarks of freedom, which boys and girls when they are made conscious of each other, set up instinctively, had been useless in this case. She was neither afraid of him nor solicitous about him. Sometimes she took no more notice than if he had been a cabbage, and at other times was as seriously confidential as if he had been eighty. Harry had liked all the ways of it. He had been piqued a little sometimes, but afterwards had found it quite natural, and liked her friendliness and indifference, and the occasional moment of household intimacy, when she would look at him to indicate some little service she wanted, as she might have looked at her brother, without words, taking his interest and compliance for granted. And gradually, without any thought, this had come to be the pleasure and support of Harry’s life. When he did not see her, when he was not at the house for a whole day, it was a dull day indeed; but still faintly illuminated by to-morrow, when he was sure to see her. When she went away upon a visit, which happened once, the Consul’s despondency kept him in countenance. Mr. Bonamy adopted Harry in her place. “Come in and help me to eat something,” he said, “I can’t bear her empty seat. When my Rita is away I feel inclined to hang myself.” Harry had almost betrayed himself (to himself) by the warmth of the sympathy which he bestowed upon the disconsolate father; but as Mr. Bonamy ended by a doleful laugh at himself as an old fool, Harry laughed too, and the catastrophe was averted, and so things had gone on for a whole long year.