Mrs. Lansing’s face, which had been unusually placid and serene, now looked cloudy and disturbed; but she said nothing; neither did she ever again make any allusion to the flowers which so frequently came to me from Sunny Bank. One reason for this might have been that she was otherwise perfectly satisfied with the conduct of her brother, which, by the way, was _not_ wholly satisfactory to me! It is true, he was very polite, very kind; but there was about him a reserve which I could not understand, for after that little affair in the schoolroom, he never treated me with the same familiarity which marked his deportment towards the other young ladies, who came to the house. He did not like me, I said, and the thought that I was disagreeable to _him_ made me very unhappy. To be sure, he was almost constantly at Cedar Grove, where he spent most of the time in the schoolroom, “superintending us,” he told his sister, who, believing me rather inefficient, made no objection to his supposed supervision of Lina’s studies. He did not often talk much to me, but I frequently met the earnest gaze of his piercing dark eyes, particularly when little Jessie sat in my lap, listening to my instructions; and once when Herbert asked him for “a copy,”—something beginning with “R,” he wrote “Rosa Lee, Meadow Brook, Massachusetts.” Still he disliked me—I was sure of that; and though I did not then know why it was, the impression that I was to him an object of aversion made me unhappy, and almost every day I cried, while Mrs. Lansing more than once told me that “she did not believe the South agreed with me, for I was not half so _plump_ and _rosy_ as when I first came.”