When I had read so far, a sense of something electrical in the room made me look up suddenly from the page. The invalid had lifted himself a little on his elbow, and was gazing at my sister's lovely unconscious face, with such a curious intentness and yearning that I felt a shock of surprise and consternation. As my voice ceased he fell back on his pillow, and at the same moment Esther turned slowly like one waking. "Oh, do go on, Hilda," she said; "it is lovely!" I read on, but no more forgot myself in the poem. My thoughts were perturbed. Was it possible that my foolish speech the other day could come true? Was there really such a thing as love at first sight? And if the young fellow was in love with Esther, and if she should respond to him, how would things be? The hereditary enemy--why, it would be Romeo and Juliet over again. The romance of it fluttered my pulses a little, but I have a certain measure of plain common-sense, which Esther has not, where it is a question of romance. I didn't see how such a love affair could end happily, for Sir Rupert would move heaven and earth to keep his grandson from marrying a Brandon, and no doubt the young fellow was dependent on him till his death. These thoughts came between me and the page. I knew I was reading badly, for the invalid sighed once or twice uneasily, and even Esther turned and looked at me in wonder. At last I went over and put the book into her lap. "Go on, Essie," said I, "I am tired." I wanted to go and tell Aline who I guessed the stranger to be, as I ought to have done at first when I suspected it. "Do you know, Aline," I cried, bursting in on her where she was sitting with a huge pile of mending beside her, "I believe I've guessed who our visitor is." "Indeed, Hilda! And who is he?" "Why, Sir Rupert's grandson." Aline dropped her piece of mending, and stared at me aghast. "Why should you think so, Hilda? He hasn't told you?" "I've been putting two and two together, and I think we are a parcel of dunderheads not to have thought of it before. Don't you remember that the boys told us, a couple of days before the accident, that Sir Rupert's grandson had come home, and about the horse following? Then who in the world would be so unnatural as to make no inquiries after the boy except that same horrid old Sir Rupert?" "You are probably right, Hilda. I wonder we didn't think of it. And that, of course, was why I thought I recognized his grandfather's name. Of course his mother's name was Mary Vane. I remember now to have heard it from our own dear mother." "It is plain enough to me," I said. "I only wonder we didn't think of it all along." "Ah, you see you are the wise Hilda! But it wouldn't have made any difference. We couldn't have let him die outside our walls if he were twenty times our hereditary enemy." "Which he hardly is."