“You are seeking for a compliment, for of course you know just how beautiful and brilliant and sparkling you are; only that sudden turn of your head and flash of your eyes does bother me so. And you are young, too. As young as I am, I guess. I am twenty-one.” “And I am nineteen,” Magdalen rejoined, while Alice exclaimed: “Only nineteen! That _is_ young to be doing for one’s self; young to come here, to care for me, in _this_ house.” She seemed to be talking in an absent kind of way, and her eyes, which were looking far off across the river, had in them a sad, sorry expression, as if to care for _her_, in _that_ house, was a lot not to be envied. Turning suddenly to Magdalen, she asked: “_Are you nervous, Miss Lennox?_” That was the fourth time this question had been put to Magdalen, who laughed a little hysterically as she replied: “I never supposed I was, but fear I shall be if questioned again upon the subject. Your aunt asked me twice if I was nervous, and Mr. Guy Seymour once.” As she said the last name, Alice colored a little, but she merely answered: “You saw cousin Guy in New York; auntie’s husband was his uncle, but I call him cousin just the same. Did he say when he was coming to Beechwood?” “At Christmas, I believe,” Magdalen replied, wondering that Alice paid no heed to what she had said of her nervousness. She was standing with her hands clasped, and the same expression in her eyes which Magdalen had observed before. She was evidently thinking of something foreign to Guy Seymour, or nervousness, and she stood thus until Magdalen heard in the hall outside the opening of a door, and caught the faintest possible sound like a human cry. She might not have noticed it at all but for the effect it had on Alice, who started suddenly from her dreamy attitude, and said: “I must go now, Miss Lennox. I shall see you at dinner, which will be served in an hour. I am so glad you have come to me. I feel stronger with you already,—feel as if you would do me good,—do us all good, perhaps. _Au revoir_, till dinner time.” She flitted from the room, and Magdalen heard again the quick closing of a door down the hall. Then all was still, and the house was as silent as if she were its only occupant. It had not occurred to her that there was any mystery at Beechwood, any grief or shame which the family tried to cover up, but the moment Alice was gone she felt a weight settling down upon her, a feeling of loneliness and desolation, which she called homesickness, and burying her face among the pillows of the tempting-looking bed, she wept bitterly for a few moments. Then, remembering dinner, she dried her eyes and commenced unpacking her trunks, which had been sent up while Alice was with her. “I shall not be expected to dress much. This will do very nicely,” she thought, as she shook out the folds of a heavy black silk, made the winter before by Mrs. Irving’s dressmaker.