Young Everard listened with the most devout attention, while Rosalind, on her side, could not refrain from an involuntary reflection as to the extreme inconvenience of Mr. Pulteney’s presence now. If that had been all along possible, was not Aunt Sophy guilty of a kind of constructive bigamy? To hear her dwelling upon this subject, and the stranger listening with so much attention, gave Rosalind an insane desire to laugh. Even Roland Hamerton, she thought, would have seen the humor of the suggestion; but Everard was quite serious, lending an attentive ear. He was very anxious to please. There was an absence of ease about him in his anxiety. Not the ghost of a smile stole to his lips. He sat there until Mrs. Lennox got tired, and remembered that the early hour at which she began to bathe every morning made it expedient now to go to bed. He was on the alert in a moment, offering his arm, and truly sympathetic about the difficulty she expressed in rising from her chair. “I can get on when once I am fairly started,” she said; “thank you so much, Mr. Everard. Rosalind is very kind, but naturally in a gentleman’s arm there is more support.” “I am so glad that I can be of use,” he said fervently. And Rosalind followed up-stairs, carrying Aunt Sophy’s work, half pleased, half amused, a little disconcerted by the sudden friendship which had arisen between them. She was, herself, in a very uncertain, somewhat excited state of mind. The re-appearance of the stranger who had achieved for himself, she could not tell how, a place in her dreams, disturbed the calm in which she had been living, which in itself was a calm unnatural at her age. Her heart beat with curious content, expectation, doubt, and anxiety. He was not like the other men whom she had known. There was something uncertain about him, a curiosity as to what he would do or say, a suppressed alarm in her mind as to whether his doings and sayings would be satisfactory. He might make some terrible mistake. He might say something that would set in a moment a great gulf between him and her. It was uncomfortable, and yet perhaps it had a certain fascination in it. She never knew what was the next thing he might say or do. But Aunt Sophy was loud in his praises when they reached their own apartment. “What a thoroughly nice person!” she said. “What a modest, charming young man! not like so many, laughing in their sleeve, in a hurry to get away, taking no trouble about elder people. Mr. Everard has been thoroughly well brought up, Rosalind; he must have had a nice mother. That is always what I think when I see a young man with such good manners. His mother must have been a nice woman. I am sure if he had been my own nephew he could not have been more attentive to me.”