“Did I?—­I dare say I’m a capricious creature—­but, somehow, I don’t regard Bob, just as I used to.  He has been away from us so much, of late, you know—­and the army makes men so formidable—­and, they are not like us, you know—­and, altogether, I think Bob excessively changed.”

“Well, I’m glad mamma don’t hear this, Maud.  She looks upon her son, now he is a major, and twenty-seven, just as she used to look upon him, when he was in petticoats—­nay, I think she considers us all exactly as so many little children.”

“She is a dear, good mother, I know,” said Maud, with emphasis, tears starting to her eyes, involuntarily, almost impetuously—­ “whatever she says, does, wishes, hopes, or thinks, is right.”

“Oh!  I knew you would come to, as soon as there was a question about mother!  Well, for my part, I have no such horror of men, as not to feel just as much tenderness for father or brother, as I feel for mamma, herself.”

“Not for Bob, Beulah.  Tenderness for Bob!  Why, my dear sister, that is feeling tenderness for a Major of Foot, a very different thing from feeling it for one’s mother.  As for papa—­dear me, he is glorious, and I do so love him!”

“You ought to, Maud; for you were, and I am not certain that you are not, at this moment, his darling.”

It was odd that this was said without the least thought, on the part of the speaker, that Maud was not her natural sister—­that, in fact, she was not in the least degree related to her by blood.  But so closely and judiciously had captain and Mrs. Willoughby managed the affair of their adopted child, that neither they themselves, Beulah, nor the inmates of the family or household, ever thought of her, but as of a real daughter of her nominal parents.  As for Beulah, her feelings were so simple and sincere, that they were even beyond the ordinary considerations of delicacy, and she took precisely the same liberties with her titular, as she would have done with a natural sister.  Maud alone, of all in the Hut, remembered her birth, and submitted to some of its most obvious consequences.  As respects the captain, the idea never crossed her mind, that she was adopted by him; as respects her mother, she filled to her, in every sense, that sacred character; Beulah, too, was a sister, in thought and deed; but, Bob, he had so changed, had been so many years separated from her; had once actually called her Miss Meredith—­ somehow, she knew not how herself—­it was fully six years since she had begun to remember that he was not her brother.

“As for my father,” said Maud, rising with emotion, and speaking with startling emphasis—­“I will not say I love him—­I worship him!”

“Ah!  I know that well enough, Maud; and to say the truth, you are a couple of idolaters, between you.  Mamma says this, sometimes; though she owns she is not jealous.  But it would pain her excessively to hear that you do not feel towards Bob, just as we all feel.”