"
"I really haven't thought about it at all," said Miss Keene coolly. "I
thought it was YOU who were annoyed."
"I? not at all," returned Hurlstone quickly. "I have been able to assist
the Padre in arranging the ecclesiastical archives of the church, and
in suggesting some improvement in codifying the ordinances of the last
forty years. No; I believe I'm earning my living here, and I fancy they
think so."
"Then it isn't THAT that troubles you?" said Miss Keene carelessly, but
glancing at him under the shade of her lashes.
"No," he said coldly, turning away.
Yet unsatisfactory as these brief interviews were, they revived in Miss
Keene the sympathizing curiosity and interest she had always felt for
this singular man, and which had been only held in abeyance at the
beginning of their exile; in fact, she found herself thinking of him
more during the interval when they seldom saw each other, and apparently
had few interests in common, than when they were together on the
Excelsior. Gradually she slipped into three successive phases of feeling
towards him, each of them marked with an equal degree of peril to her
peace of mind. She began with a profound interest in the mystery of
his secluded habits, his strange abstraction, and a recognition of
the evident superiority of a nature capable of such deep
feeling--uninfluenced by those baser distractions which occupied Brace,
Crosby, and Winslow.
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