"The boy who came with the Bartletts?" Bertha interposed. "I saw him, and was positively unhappy about him, because I could not attend to him. Did he take him in hand?" she asked, brightening visibly. "I knew he would, if he noticed him particularly. It was just like him to do it." "I saw him first," Mrs. Sylvestre explained; "but I am afraid I should not have been equal to the occasion if Mr. Arbuthnot had not assisted me. It certainly surprised me that he should do it. He knew the Bartletts, and had met the boy's sister, and in the most wonderful, yet the most uneffusive and natural, way he utilized his material until the boy felt himself quite at home, and not out of place at all. One of the nicest things was the way in which he talked about Whippleville,--the boy came from Whippleville. He seemed to give it a kind of interest and importance, and even picturesqueness. He did not pretend to have been there; but he knew something of the country, which is pretty, and he was very clever in saying neither too much nor too little. Of course that was nice." "Colonel Tredennis could not have done it," said Bertha. Agnes paused. She felt there was something of truth in the statement, but she was reluctant to admit it. "Why not?" she inquired. "By reason of the very thing which is his attraction for you,--because he is too massive to be adroit." Agnes was silent. "Was it not Colonel Tredennis who went to Virginia when your little girl was ill?" she asked, in a few moments. "Yes," was Bertha's response. "He came because Richard was away and papa was ill." "It was Janey who told me of it," said Agnes, quietly. "And she made a very pretty story of it, in her childish way. She said that he carried her up and down the room when she was tired, and that when her head ached he helped her not to cry. He must be very gentle. I like to think of it. It is very picturesque; the idea of that great soldierly fellow nursing a frail little creature, and making her pain easier to bear. Do you know, I find myself imagining that I know how he looked." Bertha sat perfectly still. She, too, knew how he had looked. But there was no reason, she told herself, for the sudden horrible revulsion of feeling which rushed upon her with the remembrance. A little while before, when Agnes had told her story, there had been a reason why she should be threatened by her emotions; but now it was different,--now that there was, so to speak, no pathos in the air; now that they were merely talking of commonplace, unemotional things. But she remembered so well; if she could have forced herself to forget for one instant she might have overcome the passion of unreasoning anguish which seized her; but it was no use, and as she made the effort Agnes sat and watched her, a strange questioning dawning slowly in her eyes. "He looked--very large"--