And thus they sat for some minutes, apart and yet together.
It was Kitty herself who spoke first. Her thought of Gilbert associated itself with that other subject about which she was also so glad—the coming of her father, and it was of him she spoke.
"Do you remember my father, Gilbert?" she asked.
"Perfectly," replied Gilbert. "I had just come back from school for the last time, and—he was very kind to me. Of course, I remember him quite well. And—and—it was then that he brought you to our house."
"That was seven years ago," said Kitty. "Seven years! I haven't seen him for all these years. I wonder if he is much changed? He will see a great change in me. I was only a girl, a little girl, then, and now I am a woman."
As she uttered the last words she glanced a little apprehensively at her companion, for she felt she had perhaps given him an opportunity. She saw his face was clouded; his eyes were fixed on a point in the distance, and he did not speak.
"Your father's return," at length said he, with a sigh, "will make a difference, I fear."
"In what way?" inquired Kitty, not at once following hard on the track of what was passing in his mind.
"He will take you from us," said Gilbert; and then he added, inconsequently and involuntarily, "I wonder if he will like me?"
And the girl now understood.