Her voice and accent were remarkably refined, and the tone of her conversation, though its matter was only of the ordinary kind, was far removed from the commonplace. She touched her topics lightly and easily, let them go without too much handling, and gradually infused into her companion some of the brightness and buoyancy which animated herself. Gordon Frere had seen her sufficiently often to be familiar with most of her moods, and with all the variations of her appearance, for hers was by no means the "beauty for ever unchangingly bright," which is also undeniably uninteresting; but he began to think that he had never seen her to so much advantage as on this occasion, and to discover new charms in her, as she sat and talked to him, in her clear fresh voice, and her low happy laughter broke every now and then the tenor of their dialogue. What did they talk about? That would be difficult to tell; and the discourse, written down, which suffices to charm and engross two young persons, already very well disposed to regard each other as the most bewitching and delightful individuals in the world, would have singularly little attraction for a third party outside that enchanted pale, which encloses within a magic circle the sayings and doings of those under the spell. The pleasantest "talks" are those which have the least in them; the best-remembered interviews are frequently those in which there have been no salient features, of which it would be hardest to render an account,--those in which acquaintance passes into knowledge, and grows into friendship after a strange fashion, distinctly felt, but not to be described. When the transition is not from acquaintance to friendship, but from liking to love, the process is even more difficult of description; and a transition of this kind was taking place in the pretty, if not particularly neat, drawing-room which formed so striking a contrast to the apartment beneath it, in which Mr. Guyon and Robert Streightley had held a parley, destined to influence the future fate of Katharine and her visitor very materially.