Julia gave a little start, but presently looked up, with an expression meant to be artless.
"I knew it before we were married," Joseph quietly answered.
Clementina bit her lip. Julia, concealing her surprise, flashed a triumphant glance at her sister, then a tender one at Joseph, and said: "We will both let the old birthdays go; we will only have one and the same anniversary from this time on!"
Joseph felt, through some natural magnetism of his nature rather than from any perceptible evidence, that Clementina was sharply and curiously watching the relation between himself and his wife. He had no fear of her detecting misgivings which were not yet acknowledged to himself, but was instinctively on his guard in her presence.
It was not many days before Philip called. Julia received him cordially, as the friend of her husband, while Clementina bowed with an impassive face, without rising from her seat. Philip, however, crossed the room and gave her his hand, saying cheerily: "We used to be old friends, Miss Blessing. You have not forgotten me?"
"We cannot forget when we have been asked to do so," she warbled.
Philip took a chair. "Eight years!" he said: "I am the only one who has changed in that time."
Julia, looked at her sister, but the latter was apparently absorbed in comparing some zephyr tints.
"The whirligig of time!" he exclaimed: "who can foresee anything? Then I was an ignorant, petted young aristocrat,—an expectant heir; now behold me, working among miners and puddlers and forgemen! It's a rough but wholesome change. Would you believe it, Mrs. Asten, I've forgotten the mazurka!"
"I wish to forget it," Julia replied: "the spring-house is as important to me as the furnace to you."