Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/330

320 and turning to that lady continued—"Why aunt, this man is my brother's close friend and was my own intimate acquaintance (for a few short months at least), and professed a great attachment to my boy—and when he passes the house, so many scores of miles from his home, he declines to look in for fear of intruding!"

"Mr. Markham is over modest," observed Mrs. Maxwell.

"Over ceremonious rather," said her niece—"over—well, it's no matter." And turning from me, she seated herself in a chair beside the table, and pulling a book to her by the cover, began to turn over the leaves in an energetic kind of abstraction.

"If I had known," said I, "that you would have honoured me by remembering me as an intimate acquaintance, I most likely should not have denied myself the pleasure of calling upon you, but I thought you had forgotten me long ago."