As the door finally opened to admit Fox, Gerty English rose rather hastily and retreated to one of the other rooms, with her arms full of books and papers, and he found himself face to face at last with Margaret. There was an eloquent silence; he was painfully aware of the change in her, that the delicate hollows in her cheeks were sharpened while her eyes seemed larger and more brilliant, and there was a wistfulness, a soft tremulous happiness and expectation in her expression which touched him to the heart. She had never looked so young, so fragile and so gentle since those old days when as half child, half woman, he had loved her. That dead love lying between them now made an impassable barrier, she could as little rekindle it as she could reclaim a fallen star. Some dim, half interpreted perception of this chilled her heart and stayed the passionate greeting on her lips; she stood a moment looking at him, terribly aware of the calmness of his bearing, his pallor, his dark troubled eye which neither kindled nor blenched at the sight of her, but met hers with a studied gentleness which expressed neither joy nor reluctance. A keen pang of dread tore her heart, but the next instant joy, wild, almost childish joy at the sight of him, welled up and swept away her doubts. “Oh, William!” she exclaimed with trembling lips, holding out both hands, “at last, at last! It has been eons since we met!” “And you look ill,” he replied kindly, “Margaret, I hoped to see you well again. How is this?” Her eyes sought his face, eager, feverish, questioning; her heart trembled, was this all?--this stilted, quiet, commonplace greeting? She checked the cry of reproach which rose to her white lips, and smiled--a wan and pallid smile. “I’m quite well,” she replied with sudden calm; “you forget the months have been long and troubled ones; I suppose I grow old!” “I never saw you look younger, more as you used to look ten years ago,” he exclaimed involuntarily. “Do I?” there was a tremulous note of eagerness in her voice, and a faint blush passed over her face, but she evaded his hand, which he had stretched out again to clasp hers, and went quietly to a shaded corner where neither lamplight nor firelight fell too sharply on her. “Sit down, William, and tell me about yourself.” He obeyed her mechanically, unconscious that his manner had betrayed anything, but aware of a sudden indefinable change in her, a restraint and repression. “There is nothing to tell,” he said, with some impatience; “the old story--primaries, conventions, a stormy campaign and finally, as you know, my re-election is assured, if I care for it!” he added, a hard new note of indifference in his voice.