his reserved habits and quiet ways, he had learnt the whole history of
the place and people before he had been at Lionnet a month.

At the Hill things remained unchanged for the ladies, save for the
additional burden of years and the pleasant news that Edgar was
expected home daily. Adelaide, now twenty-four, took the news as a
personal grace, and blossomed into smiles and glad humor of which only
Josephine understood the source. But Josephine held her tongue, and
received the confidence of her young friend with discretion. As she
had never dispossessed her own old idol, she could feel for Adelaide,
and she was not disposed to look on her patient determination with
displeasure. The constancy of the two, however, was very different in
essential meaning. With Josephine it was the constancy that is born of
an affectionate disposition and the absence of rival Lotharios: with
Adelaide it was the result of calculation and decision. The one would
have worshiped Sebastian as she worshiped him now had he been ruined,
a cripple, a criminal even: the other would have shut out Edgar
inexorably from her very dreams had not his personality included
the Hill. With the one it was self-abasement--with the other
self-consideration; but it came to the same thing in the end, and the
men profited equally.

All these changes Sebastian Dundas found to have taken place when he
returned to North Aston with gray hair instead of brown, his smooth,
fair skin tanned and roughened, and his weak, finely-cut, effeminate
mouth hidden by a moustache of a reddish tint, mingled with white.
Still, he was Sebastian; and after the first shock of his altered
appearance had been got over, Josephine carried her incense in the old
way, and found her worship as dear and as tantalizing as ever.