He had drawn himself up to his full height, and stood seemingly rapt in earnest thought, for his brows were slightly contracted, and his ingenuous-looking eyes had taken a deep, fixed look that strangely moved his cousin. With the quickness of a woman's insight she saw that her jest had been ill-timed, that a certain indescribable change, perhaps that for which she had hoped and longed, had come to the beautiful boy whom she had loved and caressed with almost maternal tenderness, for manhood's strength of purpose was written on his face. Her first feeling was a sense of foreboding. If Arthur was indeed changed, would he be changed to her?
The next was a determination, strong as the womanhood which with her love the young girl had put on early, to share his secret, whatever it might be.
She was too young and too inexperienced to understand all that this change, which she certainly felt, might mean; she could not reason about the new earnestness, nor trace it to any cause which he might think it well to hide, for Adèle was eminently generous and unsuspicious. She was accustomed to her cousin's light, boyish affection, and did not expect him to be a passionate lover; she was therefore ready with all her soul to rejoice in anything that would make him less frivolous, less absorbed in self and the mere enjoyment of life.
For a few moments she stood silently at the mirror, looking into it, but looking absently, for her mind was engaged in the problem of how to approach him, how to gain his confidence at this time which the young girl instinctively felt to be critical in her cousin's history. If he had ambitious dreams, was it not right that she should share them? She had always been his confidante; the bare idea, indeed, of being shut out from any of Arthur's secrets gave Adèle keen pain.
Deciding at last that frankness was her best policy, she turned to her cousin and putting both hands on his shoulders looked earnestly into his eyes. "Arthur," she said with a slight tremor in her voice, "what are you thinking about? Tell me."
He might have been called from a distant land, so great was the interval that separated his mind from hers at that moment, and at first he seemed even to have difficulty in recalling his scattered ideas.
She repeated the question, with an added earnestness that lent pathos to her voice.
Then he looked down upon her:
"Why do you wish so much to know, Adèle?"