I shook my head. "You will not say that after you have seen Mr. Shenstone; but here he comes." The clergyman stood for a moment in the doorway before he entered, his tall, stooping figure nearly filling it. I advanced to meet him, and Victor rose. The room was so dark that at first he did not recognize me, and, of course, saw but indistinctly my companion. But as I spoke, he extended his hand cordially, and gave us both a kind reception. "I have been expecting a visit from you," he said, sitting down beside me, and speaking in the quiet tone that was habitual with him, and looking at me with his kind smile. "You have been here some days, have you not?" "Yes, sir, and I've meant to come; but there has been something going on every day that has interfered, and I have supposed every day, sir, that you would be there." "Ah!" he said, with the slightest perceptible fading of the smile, "I have been so long out of gay company that I should not be at home there now. The quiet of my little village suits me best." I knew this would be a confirmation of Victor's judgment, so I hurried on to say, "But, sir, you sometimes go among gay people. I am sure you are often at Windy Hill, and at the Emersons, are you not?" "Sometimes--oh! yes; but it seems different with Rutledge. It would be to me," he went on in a lower tone, "unspeakably grating and painful to see that place throw off the gloom and silence that it has worn for twenty years--twenty years and more. But you cannot be expected to understand this. I had forgotten you were nearly a child as yet. You only know regret and sorrow by name, I suppose." There must have been an involuntary denial of this on my face, for he looked at me attentively for a moment; then, in a tone that had a little sadness in it, he said: "But you are older than you were last fall, my child, I see; one takes quick strides sometimes toward maturity after one has crossed the threshold. This little girl and I, Mr. Viennet, were very good friends last year and I hope that the world has not separated us quite, though it has changed one of us a little, I fear." I could not keep back the sudden tears that rushed into my eyes; the tone of sympathy so strange to my ears exorcised the evil tempers that had swayed me so long. If it had not been for Victor's presence, I should have thrown off the reserve and silence that I had so long maintained toward all around me, and have saved myself perhaps from years of misery. Only Mr. Shenstone's compassionate eyes saw the emotion that flashed through mine; murmuring some excuse about finding Mrs. Arnold, I quitted the room. I found her in the apartment that had been my sick-room, busy as ever with her silent, rapid needle. Throwing my arms around her neck, I kissed her affectionately. "Why have you not been before?" she said, quietly. "Because I haven't done anything right or pleasant since I came," I returned, with a little bitterness.