Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/329

Rh "I believe not."

"Nobody dead? nobody married?"

"No."

"Or—or expecting to marry?—No old ties dissolved or new ones formed? no old friends forgotten or supplanted?"

She dropped her voice so low in the last sentence that no one could have caught the concluding words but myself, and at the same time turned her eyes upon me with a dawning smile, most sweetly melancholy, and a look of timid though keen enquiry that made my cheeks tingle with inexpressible emotions.

"I believe not," I answered—"Certainly not, if others are as little changed as I." Her face glowed in sympathy with mine.

"And you really did not mean to call?" she exclaimed.

"I feared to intrude."

"To intrude!" cried she with an impatient gesture.—"What"—but as if suddenly recollecting her aunt's presence, she checked