And this was Elly! He took the hands she held out to him, and grasped them tight, and stared at her, but with changing looks, and the most extraordinary revolution going on in his mind. So this was Elly! He felt himself grow red, he felt himself stare; he was speechless, and had not a word to say. He had a kind of certainty that he must be disappointing to her, and that she expected him, naturally, to say something. But he could not find a word to say. At last she tried to draw her fingers out of his clasp, and grew red, and laughed. ‘I daresay it is my fault. My hands are not so solid as they used to be. You--you hurt me a little, Jack!’ He dropped them as if they had been on fire, and burst into excuses. ‘How horrible of me!--how disgusting. As if I oughtn’t to have known. As if I shouldn’t have been sure----’ And here John’s voice seemed to die away in his throat, and he stood, now averting his eyes, now giving her a sudden shame-faced glance, crimson covering his face, and shame and perturbation his soul. Why should he have been so much ashamed? and why should the sight of Elly have discomposed him so? Who can tell? It was a climax, and it was at the same time a contradiction. _That_ Elly! How was he ever to suppose she would grow to be like _that_? And yet of course that was just how she must have grown, he said to himself--or rather, which is truer, himself said to him--as he stood staring, lost in disappointment and trouble, and self-disgust and delight. And the strange thing was, that she too grew confused and embarrassed under his gaze. She had been, perhaps, to tell the truth, a little embarrassed from the first, not knowing how to get the first meeting over, anxious to get it over, and have the new system of intercourse begun. ‘Well, Sandford,’ said Percy, ‘you seem to find my sister as much changed as you found me? Where’s Aunt Mary, Elinor? Of course she is full of curiosity to see the great conqueror that is to be----’