certainly ill-favoured enough to--" here, interrupting himself, and
breaking into a new sentence, Aram added: "but at all events he will
frighten your nieces no more--he has proceeded on his journey northward.
And now, yonder lies my way home. Good evening." The abruptness of this
farewell did indeed take Lester by surprise.

"Why, you will not leave me yet? The young ladies expect your return to
them for an hour or so! What will they think of such desertion? No, no,
come back, my good friend, and suffer me by and by to walk some part of
the way home with you."

"Pardon me," said Aram, "I must leave you now. As to the ladies," he
added, with a faint smile, half in melancholy, half in scorn, "I am not
one whom they could miss;--forgive me if I seem unceremonious. Adieu."

Lester at first felt a little offended, but when he recalled the peculiar
habits of the Scholar, he saw that the only way to hope for a continuance
of that society which had so pleased him, was to indulge Aram at first in
his unsocial inclinations, rather than annoy him by a troublesome
hospitality; he therefore, without further discourse, shook hands with
him, and they parted.

When Lester regained the little parlour, he found his nephew sitting,
silent and discontented, by the window. Madeline had taken up a book, and
Ellinor, in an opposite corner, was plying her needle with an air of
earnestness and quiet, very unlike her usual playful and cheerful
vivacity. There was evidently a cloud over the groupe; the good Lester
regarded them with a searching, yet kindly eye.

"And what has happened?" said he, "something of mighty import, I am sure,