A shadow fell across the doorway, and a young girl came in, one of the sunset gleams reflected from some of the endless mirrors of the house falling on her and lighting up her face. My first thought was, "She is almost a woman:" my second was, "I had never expected she would be so beautiful." We had not spoken yet: she ran up to me eagerly and looked into my face, and I clasped her hands. When I saw that she was crying there seemed to me but one way of greeting the child. I took her in my arms and kissed her. It seemed strange, I think, to neither of us that we should meet in this way. But when we looked at each other now, I felt a curious glow over my face, and she hung her head and was blushing vividly, as I had never suspected the pale little Helen I had once known so well, with her aspect of almost severe purity, could ever blush. There was a new sort of beauty about her: a soft richness of tint and texture seemed added to cheek and lip, and the old imperious concentration of her glance was, for the moment, quite gone. Still, although I could easily see that she was frightened at her own temerity in allowing my more than brotherly freedom, I could not find it in my heart to repent it. "Where is my mother, Helen?" I asked, taking her hand in mine to reassure her, for I saw that something was embarrassing her very much. "It seems I was not expected to-day?" "Not so late as this," she explained; and presently I was talking freely with her, and she was listening without a particle of self-consciousness in her manner. It appeared that my mother and Mr. Floyd had gone out to drive, but would presently return to tea--that my mother had been longing for me, and they had all wondered why I had delayed coming. This was all very pleasant, uttered in the sweetest voice by my young hostess, and when she asked me if I would go out and see the sunset from the terrace, it was very easy to say that I would follow her anywhere.