Suddenly and without warning the curtain between the two rooms moved. How quickly those two hands drew apart from each other, as if some act of guilt had been doing! If any additional proof was wanting, of something clandestine (and of course improper!) between the parties, here it was certainly supplied. People never attempt to deceive, who have not been playing tricks. Well-regulated and candid people, who do everything by rule, never start and blush at any awkward _contretemps_, never have any concealments, but tell everything to the outer world. Privacy is a crime--all sly people are reprobates. Wicked Tom and erring Joe!--what a gulf of perdition they were sinking into without knowing it! The curtain not only moved but was drawn aside, and out of it stepped Bell Crawford. She walked slowly and deliberately, like one in deep thought, and without a word crossed the room towards the point where her two friends were sitting. Something in her face brought them both to their feet. What was that something? She had been absent from them for perhaps ten minutes--certainly not more than a quarter of an hour; and yet change enough had passed over her, to have marked the passage of ten twelve-months. The face looked older, perhaps sadder, more like that of her brother, and yet less querulous, more womanly, better and more loveable. Something seemed to have stirred the depths of her nature, of which only the surface had been before exposed to view. The revelation was better than the index. She was capable of generous things at that moment, of which she had been utterly incapable the hour before. It was probable that she could never again dash all over town in the search for a yard of ribbon of a particular color: her next search was likely to be a much more serious one.