We will not intrude on the first sacred moments of the reunion of the brother and sister, but rejoin them in the drawing-room, when that tumultuous period being over, there is something more distinct and connected in their words and conduct for the reasonable and indifferent reader to appreciate.
They are still alone together. Mrs. de Burgh is driving Mrs. Trevyllian, and Louis out in the grounds; no one, then, is in the house to break upon their glad communion.
And it was well; for theirs was indeed a joy in which the stranger intermeddleth not. Mary, with the glistening drops gladness had called forth still hanging on her lashes like rain in the sunshine of her beaming countenance, sits on a low seat, and gazes up in the face of her tall, handsome brother, as he stands on the hearth-rug, looking down with caressing interest into her own.
She tells him he has grown ten times more handsome—that she had no idea he was so tall. She gazes up into his clear blue eyes, clear, open, truthful, unshrinking eyes, and it must have been to her like one who gazes on the blue, pellucid, open vault of our summer heaven, after having been long accustomed to the dark, uncertain, latent fire of some tropic sky.
But of course Mary, had no such defined conceptions. She only felt "the sense, the spirit, and the light divine at the same moment in those steadfast eyes," shaded like her own, with the long dark lashes; but which were not so prone, as hers, to sweep thoughtfully and seriously his cheek; the glance might wander too, over that high, white, open brow, as over a pleasant field, which the hand of his Creator had blessed for the expansion and production of all good seeds of intellect, intelligence, and virtue. To look there, was to see that no base, corrupting passion or pursuit had as yet worked their contracting power, that the commerce with the world and its affairs, in which for so young a man he had been so intimately and responsibly involved, had served but to expand and develope the higher, nobler properties of his mind, which else might longer have been kept in abeyance. But it is the expression of that mouth—that smile which more than all bespeaks the pure, the amiable, the genial and pleasant feelings of his nature—attributes which characterize Arthur Seaham's disposition, in a manner rarely seen exemplified, though we may in our experience have seen precedented.
No wonder Mary always doated on this brother, no wonder she looked on him now with almost an adoring gaze, and marvelled how she had been all this time so happy and satisfied without him, nay—almost wondered for one moment how it could have ever come to pass, that she loved another, better even than himself.
But if her admiration was thus strongly drawn forth by her brother's appearance, Arthur Seaham, on his part, seemed none the less struck by his sister's looks; and brothers, it is well known, are particularly disposed to be critical on the subject of the personal appearance of their sisters.
"But Mary," he suddenly exclaimed, taking his sister gently by the arm and bringing her face in direct confrontation with his own, "let me look a little more closely at you. There you sit, staring me out of countenance, paying me compliments till I do not know where to look, and yet think yourself to escape all criticism. Now tell me, pray, what has changed you so? Made you grow so beautiful? Surely you are not the little pale Welsh mountain flower, I left behind me two years and a half ago?"
"Oh, my dear brother," Mary answered, as she laughingly and blushingly submitted to this inspection, "I assure you I am just the same, just as much a 'bit of white heath,' as you used flatteringly to call me—but—but you know when I was agreeably excited you always told me I was almost pretty, and I am very agreeably excited at present."