"Peter! surely you have not taken to spectacles!"
"Yes, I have."
"But why?"
Peter stared at her. "Why does anybody take to them, Mildred? From failing sight."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Mildred. "We seem to have gone away altogether from youth—to be gliding into old age without any interregnum."
"But we are not middle-aged yet, Mildred," said Mrs. Peter.
A sudden opening of the door—a well-known form, tall, upright, noble, but from which a portion of the youthful elasticity was gone—and Mildred found herself face to face with her cousin William. How loved still, the wild beating of her heart told her! His simply friendly greeting, warm though it was, recalled her to her senses.
"What a stranger you have been to us, Mildred!" he exclaimed. "Never to come near Westerbury all these years! When my father was dying, he wished so much to see you."
"I would have come then had I been able, but Lady Dewsbury was very ill, and I could not leave her. Indeed, I wish I could have seen both my aunt and uncle once more."
"They felt it, I can tell you, Mildred."