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self."
"And anything more?" I asked, laughing.
"Yes,--what they say to you. You look as handsome to-night, Sandy, as the tall gentleman with Miss Merton,--only such a very different handsome!"
"Then you admired his appearance?" I asked, lingering. "I fancied you were too busy looking at Miss Merton to think of him."
But Annie continued to unfold her opinion without noticing my remark.
"I should be afraid he wouldn't care for me, if I didn't look and act just as he wanted me to. I don't like his way of being handsome, Sandy, so well as yours."
Unconsciously, Annie was making her first experiment in analysis; and as I did not quite relish the basis upon which my beauty rested, I bade her good-night, and hurried away.
I knew I was not handsome, yet Annie's naïve admiration undoubtedly braced me to face the evening. In my gray eye there was nothing of the soft, dreamy expression usually supposed to accompany the æsthetic temperament. On the contrary, it had the earnest, scrutinizing glance peculiar to a more restless intellect than mine. The intent gaze of some ancestor, perhaps, looked out from these "windows of my soul." If so, and his spirit was occasionally permitted to view the world through me, the "fancy gardening" in which I so extensively indulged could scarcely have been congenial to his tastes. The eye was the salient point, however, of a countenance not otherwise noticeable, except from a girlish habit I had of coloring whenever I was suddenly addressed.
When I reached Hillside, I rang the bell with some trepidation, which was increased by the announcement of the servant that the ladies were at the tea-table. This trifling annoyance of presenting myself at the tea-hour, when expected to pass the evening, was sufficiently serious to my awkwardness to threaten my enjoyment of the visit; but I had scarcely seated myself in the library when Miss Darry appeared.
"I hoped you would be in doubt as to the hour of coming, Sandy, and