pleasure in her society, one might say that she was almost eager to show
her delight in his. If it was a case of love at first sight, the
earliest glimpse had been to the girl, who was all eyes for Glendenning.
It was very pretty, but it was a little alarming, and perhaps a little
droll, even. She was actually making the advances, not consciously, but
helplessly; fondly, ignorantly, for I have no belief, nor had my wife (a
much more critical observer), that she knew how she was giving herself
away.

I thought perhaps that she was in the habit from pride, or something
like it, of holding herself in check, and that this blameless excess
which I saw was the natural expansion from an inner constraint. But what
I really knew was that the young people got on very rapidly, in an
acquaintance that prospered up to the last moment I saw them together.
This was just before the _Corinthian_ drew up to her landing at
Montreal, when Miss Bentley (we had learned her name) came to us from
the point where she was standing with Glendenning and said that now she
must go to her mother, and took a sweet leave of my wife. She asked
where we were going to stay in Montreal and whether we were going on to
Quebec; and said her mother would wish to send Mrs. March her card.

When she was gone, Glendenning explained, with rather superfluous
apology, that he had offered to see the ladies to a hotel, for he was
afraid that at this crowded season they might not find it easy to get
rooms, and he did not wish Mrs. Bentley, who was an invalid, to have any
anxieties about it. He bade us an affectionate, but not a disconsolate
adieu, and when we had got into the modest conveyance (if an omnibus is
modest) which was to take us to the Ottawa House, we saw him drive off
to the St. Lawrence Hall (it was twenty-five years ago) in one of those
vitreous and tinkling Montreal landaus, with Mrs. and Miss Bentley and