Very good companions had these two always been, but without a thought of love between them. They were too frank, too calmly happy together, for love. The old days, the old memories, cast a soft glow over all their relations with each other,--a light not love, but the rosy hues of a dawn that was yet to be, the luminous foretelling of the sun of passion before the day. They often alluded lightly to the persons they meant to marry,--ideals which unconsciously they made somehow like each other, even when intended most to be different. "It seems to me," Will remarked this afternoon, in a dispassionate tone, "that Frank Breck goes to see you often enough." "Doesn't he! I wish he wouldn't. Were ever two brothers more unlike than he and Hazard?" "They are different. Hazard is a royal fellow, but the less said of Frank the better." "Yes: only"-- "Only what?" The temptation of an appreciative listener has elicited many a secret which sharpest tortures could not have wrung from its possessor. Ease had no intention of disclosing to her friend the troubles which buzzed gnat-like about her ears at home; but the time, the place, and, more than all, his interested face and his often-proved sympathy won the tale from her. "It all came about," she said, "before I understood any thing of it; and now I don't know the whole story. There is something about a will that I've no clew to." "Really, this is an impressive beginning," Sanford said. "You don't mind if I smoke?" "No. I noticed that aunt Tabitha acted queerly when Frank Breck's name was mentioned, or rather I remember it now; but it has always seemed as if every thing that happened at Mullen House was strange some way. I've always seemed to be somebody else, and not myself, ever since I came here to live." "It is strange," Will assented. "It is a sort of ogre's castle, and your aunt, 'savin' yer presince,' is the ogress." "Aunt Tabitha has always been a puzzle to me," Ease said, "and I never attempt to understand her ways." "Who does?" he asked. "Frank kept coming and coming," continued she, "and getting more and more bothersome, and"-- "More what?" "Bothersome, acting foolish, you know, about me, as if he were--well you understand, of course, what I mean. I don't think I'm vain; but he did act as if he was--why, as if he liked me." "Made love to you, you mean?" "Yes: I suppose so." "The puppy!" "Why, that wasn't any harm, was it?" she asked naïvely. "Only, of course, I hate to have him about all the time, and I never liked him very well." "I should hope not," the young man interpolated with emphasis. "Not that he ever troubled me much, for of course I didn't let him; but he wanted to." "Look here," Will exclaimed, sitting up. "I've always been like a brother to you, Ease, and now you are in a place where you need a brother more than ever. I think I'd better hint gently to that young donkey that he'd find it safer to let you alone."