The two were devotedly fond of each other, but Mrs. Carling was the elder by twenty years, and in her love was an element of maternal solicitude to which her sister, while giving love for love in fullest measure, did not fully respond.  The elder would have liked to share every thought, but she was neither so strong nor so clever as the girl to whom she had been almost as a mother, and who, though perfectly truthful and frank when she was minded to express herself, gave, as a rule, little satisfaction to attempts to explore her mind, and on some subjects was capable of meeting such attempts with impatience, not to say resentment—­a fact of which her sister was quite aware.  But as time went on, and the frequency of John’s visits and attentions grew into a settled habit, Mrs. Carling’s uneasiness, with which perhaps was mingled a bit of curiosity, got the better of her reserve, and she determined to get what satisfaction could be obtained for it.

They were sitting in Mrs. Carling’s room, which was over the drawing-room in the front of the house.  A fire of cannel blazed in the grate.

A furious storm was whirling outside.  Mrs. Carling was occupied with some sort of needlework, and her sister, with a writing pad on her lap, was composing a letter to a friend with whom she carried on a desultory and rather one-sided correspondence.  Presently she yawned slightly, and, putting down her pad, went over to the window and looked out.

“What a day!” she exclaimed.  “It seems to get worse and worse.  Positively you can’t see across the street.  It’s like a western blizzard.”

“It is, really,” said Mrs. Carling; and then, moved by the current of thought which had been passing in her mind of late, “I fancy we shall spend the evening by ourselves to-night.”

“That would not be so unusual as to be extraordinary, would it?” said Mary.

“Wouldn’t it?” suggested Mrs. Carling in a tone that was meant to be slightly quizzical.

“We are by ourselves most evenings, are we not?” responded her sister, without turning around.  “Why do you particularize to-night?”

“I was thinking,” answered Mrs. Carling, bending a little closer over her work, “that even Mr. Lenox would hardly venture out in such a storm unless it were absolutely necessary.”

“Oh, yes, to be sure, Mr. Lenox; very likely not,” was Miss Blake’s comment, in a tone of indifferent recollection.

“He comes here very often, almost every night, in fact,” remarked Mrs. Carling, looking up sideways at her sister’s back.

“Now that you mention it,” said Mary dryly, “I have noticed something of the sort myself.”

“Do you think he ought to?” asked her sister, after a moment of silence.

“Why not?” said the girl, turning to her questioner for the first time.  “And why should I think he should or should not?  Doesn’t he come to see Julius, and on Julius’s invitation?  I have never asked him—­but once,” she said, flushing a little as she recalled the occasion and the wording of the invitation.