'A perfect stranger!' said Linda, who, having remembered Alaric since the days of her short frocks and lessons, looked on him as a very old friend indeed. 'Yes, a perfect stranger, if you think of it. What do any of you know about me? Your mother never saw my mother; your father knew nothing of my father; there is no kindred blood common to us. Harry Norman, there, is your near cousin; but what am I that I should be thus allowed to live with you, and walk with you, and have a common interest in all your doings?' 'Why, you are a dear friend of mamma's, are you not?' 'A dear friend of mamma's! said he, 'well, indeed, I hope I am; for your mother is at any rate a dear friend to me. But, Linda, one cannot be so much without longing to be more. Look at Harry, how happy he is!' 'But, Alaric, surely you would not interfere with Harry,' said Linda, whose humble, innocent heart thought still of nothing but the merits of her sister; and then, remembering that it was necessary that she should admit nothing on Gertrude's behalf, she entered her little protest against the assumption that her sister acknowledged Norman for her lover. 'That is, you would not do so, if there were anything in it.' 'I interfere with Harry!' said Alaric, switching the heads off the bits of fern with the cane he carried. 'No, indeed. I have no wish at all to do that. It is not that of which I was thinking. Harry is welcome to all his happiness; that is, if Gertrude can be brought to make him happy.' Linda, made no answer now; but the tear came running down her face, and her eyes became dim, and her heart beat very quick, and she didn't quite remember where she was. Up to this moment no man had spoken a word of love to Linda Woodward, and to some girls the first word is very trying. 'Interfere with Harry!' Alaric repeated again, and renewed his attack on the ferns. 'Well, Linda, what an opinion you must have of me!' Linda was past answering; she could not protest--nor would it have been expedient to do so--that her opinion of her companion was not unfavourable. 'Gertrude is beautiful, very beautiful,' he continued, still beating about the bush as modest lovers do, and should do; 'but she is not the only beautiful girl in Surbiton Cottage, nor to my eyes is she the most so.'