Her cousin had changed for the better; though it might be only the change which years make in a girl at that age, rather than any real difference of character.  She had grown handsomer.  The cheek was well rounded out now, and had a clear healthy tinge, though not at all Rose’s white and red.  Elizabeth’s colour only came when there was a call for it and then it came promptly.  And she was not very apt to smile; when she did, it was more often with a careless or scornful turn, or full and bright with a sense of the ludicrous; never a loving or benevolent smile, such as those that constantly graced Rose’s pretty lip.  Her mouth kept its old cut of grave independence, Winthrop saw at a glance; and her eye, when by chance she lifted it and it met his, was the very same mixture of coolness and fire that it had been of old; the fire for herself, the coolness for all the rest of the world.

She looked down again at her netting immediately, but the look had probably reminded her that nobody in her father’s house was playing the hostess at the moment.  A disagreeable reminder it is likely, for she worked away at her netting more vigorously than ever, and it was two or three minutes before her eyes left it again to take note of what Rose and Mr. Satterthwaite were thinking about.  Her look amused Winthrop, it was so plain an expression of impatient indignation that they did not do what they left her to do.  But seeing they were a hopeless case, after another minute or two of pulling at her netting, she changed her seat for one on his side of the room.  Winthrop gave her no help, and she followed up her duty move with a duty commonplace.

“How do you like Mannahatta, Mr. Landholm?”

“I have hardly asked myself the question, Miss Haye.”

“Does that mean you don’t know?”

“I cannot say that.  I like it as a place of business.”

“And not as a place of pleasure?”

“No.  Except in so far as the pushing on of business may be pleasure.”

“You are drawing a distinction in one breath which you confound in the next,” said Elizabeth.

“I didn’t know that you would detect it,” he said with a half smile.

“Detect what?”

“The distinction between business and pleasure.”

“Do you think I don’t know the difference?”

“You cannot know the difference, without knowing the things to be compared.”

“The things to be compared! —­” said she, with a good look at him out of her dark eyes.  “And which of them do you think I don’t know?”

“I supposed you were too busy to have much time for pleasure,” he said quietly.

“It is possible to be busy in more ways than one,” said Elizabeth, after a minute of not knowing how to take him up.

“That is just what I was thinking.”

“What are you busy about, Mr. Landholm, in this place of business?”

“I am only learning my trade,” he answered.