“I certainly cannot gainsay your position, Mrs. Appleton; but still I feel altogether disinclined to make any overtures to Maria.”

“Why so, Louisa?”

“Because I can imagine no cause for her present strange conduct, and therefore see no way of approaching”—­

The individual about whom they had been conversing passed near them at this moment, and caused Mrs. Appleton and Louisa to remember that they were prolonging their conversation to too great an extent for a social party.

“We will talk about this again,” Mrs. Appleton said, rising and passing to the side of Maria.

“You do not seem cheerful to-night, Maria; or am I mistaken in my observation of your face?” Mrs. Appleton said in a pleasant tone.

“I was not aware that there was any thing in my manner that indicated the condition of mind to which you allude,” the young lady replied, with a smile.

“There seemed to me such an indication, but perhaps it was only an appearance.”

“Perhaps so,” said Maria, with something of abstraction in her manner.  A silence, embarrassing in some degree to both parties, followed, which was broken by an allusion of Mrs. Appleton’s to Louisa Graham.

To this, Maria made no answer.

“Louisa is a girl of kind feelings,” remarked Mrs. Appleton.

“She is so esteemed,” Maria replied, somewhat coldly.

“Do you not think so, Maria?”

“Why should I think otherwise?”

“I am sure I cannot tell; but I thought there was something in your manner that seemed to indicate a different sentiment.”

To this the young lady made no reply, and Mrs. Appleton did not feel at liberty to press the subject, more particularly as she wished to induce Louisa, if she could possibly do so, to sacrifice her feelings and go to Maria with an inquiry as to the cause of her changed manner.  She now observed closely the manner of Maria, and saw that she studiously avoided coming into contact with Louisa.  Thus the evening passed away, and the two young ladies retired without having once spoken to each other.

Unlike too many of us under similar circumstances, Mrs. Appleton did not say within herself, “This is none of my business.  If they have fallen out, let them make it up again.”  Or, “If she chooses to get the ‘pouts’ for nothing, let her pout it out.”  But she thought seriously about devising some plan to bring about explanations and a good understanding again between two who had no just cause for not regarding each other as friends.  It would have been an easy matter to have gone to Maria and to have asked the cause of her changed manner towards Louisa, and thus have brought about a reconciliation; but she was desirous to correct a fault in both, and therefore resolved, if possible, to induce the latter to go to the former.  With this object in view, she called upon Louisa early on the next morning.

“I was sorry to see,” she said, after a brief conversation on general topics, “that there was no movement on the part of either yourself or Maria to bring about a mutual good understanding.”