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264 soon saw that this was a mistake. Hatty was worried, and inquired querulously twenty times a day why Elizabeth did not get a studio? Alaric had found one; why couldn't she? What was the use of fidgeting around her? She was far better alone. And so indeed she was for many hours, being a self-contained little person, without nerves, or fancies, to need either constant stimulant or sympathy. She derived great comfort from the certainty that the two whom she desired so earnestly to see drawn more and more closely together, at least understood each other better, day by day. As regarded Alaric, she could go further than this. The admiration he had avowed for Miss Shaw, some weeks back, being now purged of the mistrust with which it had been qualified, had surely ripened into something warmer and stronger. She knew her brother so well, she watched him so closely, she could not be deceived. Reticent as he was, there was an expression now and again in his eyes which told her that passion, so slowly kindled in him, was now burning in the place of colder and critical feeling. He might fight against it, he might refuse to allow, voluntarily, of its expression by word or deed; it escaped him by outlets which the vigilant Hatty never failed to note. Alaric was growing to love this girl with all the force of his strong nature.

Of Elizabeth, up to this time, she could only predicate that Alaric's character would make itself to be appreciated more and more as his true self appeared—that inner self which was not only impervious to assaults from the world at large, but had presented an exterior absolutely repellent at moments. Between this better understanding of