When I returned from New York, I appeared in court with a case which had chanced to be intrusted to me, perhaps from the inability of my client to employ an older and more expensive lawyer. I did well with it, and was complimented by several of Mr. Argyll's fraternity upon my success in handling the case. Much to my surprise and mortification, Mr. Argyll's congratulations were in constrained and studied terms. He had appeared to be more formal, less open in his manner of treating me, ever since my last visit to the city. At first I thought it my fancy, or caused by some temporary ill-health, or mental trouble, under which he might be laboring. Day by day the impression deepened upon me that his feelings toward me were not what they had been. The plainest proof I had of this was, that no offer of partnership was made. I was placed in a disagreeable situation for one of my proud temperament. My studies completed to the point where admission to practice had been granted, I had nothing to do but continue in his office, reading, reading away--not but that my time was most usefully employed thus, and not that I was in any great hurry to go into business, though my income was narrow enough, and I knew that my mother had pinched her domestic arrangements to afford me that--but I began to feel like an intruder. My ostensible use of his books, office, and instructions was at an end; I began to feel like a hanger-on. Yet I could not go away, or offer to associate myself with others, hastily. I felt that he ought either to put in execution his implied promise, or to inform me that he had changed his plans, and I was free to try elsewhere. Can any invalid tell me why he feels a prescience of the storm in his aching bones and tingling nerves while the sun still shines in a cloudless sky, and not one hint on the outward face of nature tells of a change in the weather? Neither can I explain the subtle influences which affected me, depressing me so deeply, and making me sensible of a change in that atmosphere of home which had brooded for me over the Argyll mansion. I had felt this first in the more business air of the office; gradually, it seemed to me to be creeping over the household. Mary, that sweet child of impulse, too young to assume much dignity, and too truthful to disguise her innocent face in falsehood, who had clung to me in this affliction as a sister clings to an elder brother, awakening all my tenderest instincts of protection and indulgence--this fair girl, doubly dear to me as the sister of that other woman whom I adored, began to put on an air of reserve toward me. She was kind and gentle, but she no longer ran to me with all those pretty demands and complaints, those trifling confidences, so sweet because an evidence of trust and affection; sometimes I caught her eyes fixed upon me in a sad, wondering way, which puzzled and disconcerted me; when I caught her glance, she would turn quickly, and blush.