He stopped in the garden path and looked upon the picture she made standing in the sunlight against the blazing borders, her wide hat casting a shadow on her face.  And the smile which she had known so well since childhood, indulgent, quizzical, with a touch of sadness, was in his eyes.  She was conscious of a slight resentment.  Was there, in fact, no change in her as the result of the events of those momentous ten months since she had seen him?  And rather than a tolerance in which there was neither antagonism nor envy, she would have preferred from Peter an open disapproval of luxury, of the standards which he implied were hers.  She felt that she had stepped into another world, but he refused to be dazzled by it.  He insisted upon treating her as the same Honora.

“How did you leave Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary?” she asked.

They were counting the days, he said, until she should return, but they did not wish to curtail her visit.  They did not expect her next week, he knew.

Honora coloured again.

“I feel—­that I ought to go to them,” she said.

He glanced at her as though her determination to leave Silverdale so soon surprised him.

“They will be very happy to see you, Honora,” he said.  “They have been very lonesome.”

She softened.  Some unaccountable impulse prompted her to ask:  “And you?  Have you missed me—­a little?”

He did not answer, and she saw that he was profoundly affected.  She laid a hand upon his arm.

“Oh, Peter, I didn’t mean that,” she cried.  “I know you have.  And I have missed you—­terribly.  It seems so strange seeing you here,” she went on hurriedly.  “There are so many’ things I want to show you.  Tell me how it happened hat you came on to New York.”

“Somebody in the firm had to come,” he said.

“In the firm!” she repeated.  She did not grasp the full meaning of this change in his status, but she remembered that Uncle Tom had predicted it one day, and that it was an honour.  “I never knew any one so secretive about their own affairs!  Why didn’t you write me you had been admitted to the firm?  So you are a partner of Judge Brice.”

“Brice, Graves, and Erwin,” said Peter; “it sounds very grand, doesn’t it?  I can’t get used to it myself.”

“And what made you call yourself an errand boy?” she exclaimed reproachfully.  “When I go back to the house I intend to tell Joshua Holt and—­and Mr. Spence that you are a great lawyer.”

Peter laughed.

“You’d better wait a few years before you say that,” said he.

He took an interest in everything he saw, in Mr. Holt’s flowers, in Joshua’s cow barn, which they traversed, and declared, if he were ever rich enough, he would live in the country.  They walked around the pond, —­fringed now with yellow water-lilies on their floating green pads, —­through the woods, and when the shadows were lengthening came out at the little summer-house over the valley of Silver Brook—­the scene of that first memorable encounter with the Vicomte.  At the sight of it the episode, and much else of recent happening, rushed back into Honora’s mind, and she realized with suddenness that she had, in his companionship, unconsciously been led far afield and in pleasant places.  Comparisons seemed inevitable.