And Mrs Laurie is something hard to be conciliated. Mrs Laurie is much inclined to resent this softening of manner as half an insult to her change of fortune. Patience, Menie! though your mother rebuffs him, he bears it nobly. The cloud will not lighten upon her brow--cannot lighten--for you do not know how heavily this wistful look of yours, this very anxiety to please her--and all your transparent wiles and artifices--your suppressed and trembling hope, strikes upon your mother’s heart. “She will go away--she will leave me.” Your mother says so, Menie, within herself; and it is so hard, so very hard, to persuade the unwilling content with that sad argument, “It is for her good.” Now, draw your breath softly lest she hear how your heart beats, for Randall has asked her to go to the garden with him, to speak of this; and Mrs Laurie rises with a sort of desolate stateliness--rises--accepts his offered arm, and turns away--poor Menie!--with an averted face, and without a glance at you. And now there follows a heavy time--a little space of curious restless suspense. Wandering from window to window, from table to table; striking a few notes on the ever-open piano; opening a book now, taking up a piece of work then, Menie strays about, in an excitement of anxiety which she can neither suppress nor conceal. Will they be friends? such friends--such loving friends as they might be, being as they are in Menie’s regard so noble and generous both? Will they join heartily and cordially? will they clasp hands upon a kindly bargain? But Menie shrinks, and closes her eyes--she dares not look upon the alternative. “Menie, will you not sit down?” Little July Home follows Menie with her eyes almost as wistfully as Menie follows Randall and her mother. There is no answer, for Menie is so fully occupied that the little timid voice fails to break through the trance of intense abstraction in which her heart is separated from this present scene. “Menie!” Speak louder, little girl: Menie cannot hear you, for other voices speaking in her heart So July steals across the room with her noiseless step, and has her arm twined through Menie’s before she is aware. “Come and sit down--what are they speaking about, Menie? Do you no hear me? Oh, Menie, is it our Randall? Is it his blame?”