While the elders talked, she would shoot a little glance at him across the table, a glimmer of a smile would go over her face, in which there was an appeal to him for an answering smile; a sort of unconscious telegraph of mutual understanding was set up between them. When Miss Margaret questioned him, he replied with a look to Lilias first to see if she were listening. When she spoke, though it was only a monosyllable, he paused to listen. After, when it was over, the whole scene appeared to him like a dream; the dark wainscot of the room, with the bloom of that young face against it, Miss Margaret against the light, Miss Jean, with her sweet but faded face in the full illumination of the window, old Simon making slow circles round the table. His own heart was beating with pleasure, with suspense, with excitement, the feeling that something had happened to him, something new which he scarcely understood. He did not realize that he had been suddenly stopped in his love-making to Miss Jean by this apparition, nor that it had taken from him all desire to carry on that love-making. Indeed, his mind had not taken in the new occurrence at all; he was still in this state of sensation, knowing that here was a new event which had suddenly happened to him, but not knowing what it was. CHAPTER XIV. Lewis left the Castle like a man in a dream. There was an intoxication about him which affected his whole being vaguely, as actual intoxication might do, in which there was not the slightest self-reproach or sense of doing wrong. He was elated, delighted, happy; a sort of suffusion of sweetness and brightness was in his veins, filling up everything. It affected him like a new sensation, a new event, a revelation of new possibilities. It never had occurred to him that the world could be so sweet, or any mortal creature so happy. Why was he so happy? Because there was in existence a creature so young, so fair, so sweet, as to make life itself look beautiful. What reason was that for the happiness of one who had nothing to do with her, whose life could not be affected one way or other by her existence? But he did not at first ask himself that question. It made him glad without any reason; it affected him foolishly. He could have laughed for pleasure; he thought better of everything for her sake. She seemed to fill the fresh country with a reflection of herself. He thought of nothing else as he walked down to his inn in the afternoon. She had not cared for his society, but disappeared immediately after dinner on a sign from her sister, turning and making him a salutation which was half a curtsey and half a smiling nod of familiarity. She too, perhaps, had felt the youth in him, and had not felt herself capable of curtseying ceremoniously as she had been taught. There was a merry glimmer in her eyes, though the rest of her was so demure, and this conjunction was delightful to him. He had not known what the other