Clara Walker watched with a heavy heart the friendship and close intimacy which had sprung up between her father and the widow.

From week to week it had increased until no day ever passed without their being together.

The coming meeting had been the excuse for these continual interviews, but now the meeting was over, and still the Doctor would refer every point which rose to the judgment of his neighbor.

He would talk, too, to his two daughters of her strength of character, her decisive mind, and of the necessity of their cultivating her acquaintance and following her example, until at last it had become his most common topic of conversation.
All this might have passed as merely the natural pleasure which an elderly man might take in the society of an intelligent and handsome woman, but there were other points which seemed to Clara to give it a deeper meaning.

She could not forget that when Charles Westmacott had spoken to her one night he had alluded to the possibility of his aunt marrying again.