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Rh intelligence. Miss Searle and I, meanwhile, were not wholly silent.

"I suppose that by this time," I said, "you and your cousin are almost old friends."

She trifled a moment with her fan, and then raising her homely candid gaze: "Old friends, and at the same time strangely new! My cousin,—my cousin,"—and her voice lingered on the word,—"it seems so strange to call him my cousin, after thinking these many years that I had no cousin! He's a most singular man."

"It's not so much he as his circumstances that are singular," I ventured to say.

"I'm so sorry for his circumstances. I wish I could help him in some way. He interests me so much." And here Miss Searle gave a rich, mellow sigh. "I wish I had known him a long time ago. He told me that he is but the shadow of what he was."

I wondered whether Searle had been consciously playing upon the fancy of this gentle creature. If he had, I believed he had gained his point. But in fact, his position had become to my sense so charged with opposing forces, that I hardly ventured wholly to rejoice. "His better self just now," I said, "seems again to be taking shape. It will have been a good deed on your part, Miss Searle, if you help to restore him to soundness and serenity."