Miss Jean sat gazing at him with a bewildered face. Sudden lights seemed to break over it from time to time, then disappeared in the blank of wonder and incredulity. She was giving her mind to it with amazement, with interest, with a kind of consternation, trying to make out what he meant. One moment there was a panic in her face, which, however, gave place to the faint wavering of a smile, as if she represented to herself the impossibility of any meaning that could alarm her. Her attention was so absorbed in trying to find out what it was that, when his voice ceased, she made no effort to reply. She drew a long breath, as people who have been listening to an orator do when he comes to a pause; but she was so unable to comprehend what he could be aiming at that she was incapable of speech. "I would live where you pleased," said Lewis; "I should do what you pleased. I know enough to fulfil all your wishes, there could be no failure in that. There is no worthiness in me, and perhaps you will think me unsuitable, a nobody, too young, too unimportant, that is all true; but, if devotion could make up for it, the service of my life----" "Mr. Murray," said Miss Jean at last, interrupting him, putting out her hand to stop him, "wherefore would you do all this for me? What is it you are wanting? It must be just my fancy, though I am sure my fancy was never in that way--but you seem to be making me an offer, to me that might be your mother. It cannot be that, it is not possible; but that is what it seems." "It is so," said poor Lewis, overwhelmed with such a sense of his own youngness, triflingness, insignificance, as he had never been conscious of before. "It is so! I want nothing better in this world than that you should let me love you, and take care of you; and if you would overlook my deficiencies, and be my----" "Oh, hush, hush!" cried Miss Jean, her face growing very pale. She sat for a moment with her hands clasped together, the lines of her countenance tremulous with emotion, "you must not say that word--oh! no, you must not say that word. There was a time when it was said to me by one--that would be gone almost before you were born." If Lewis had been suddenly struck by a thunderbolt he could not have been more startled, his whole being seemed arrested; he was silent, put a stop to, words and thoughts alike. He could do nothing but gaze at her, astonished, incapable even of thought. Now whether it was simple instinct, or whether it was a gleam of genius unknown in her before (and the two things are not much different), Miss Jean, as soon as she perceived what it meant, which it was so difficult to do, perceived the way out of it in a moment. Her first words closed the whole matter as effectually, as completely, as if it had never been.