'And aunt Maxwell is never going to leave off hers,' persisted the naughty boy; but when he saw that his pertness was seriously displeasing and painful to his aunt, he went and silently put his arm round her neck, kissed her cheek, and withdrew to the recess of one of the great bay-windows, where he quietly amused himself with his dog, while Mrs.
Maxwell gravely discussed with me the interesting topics of the weather, the season, and the roads.

I considered her presence very useful as a check upon my natural impulses--an antidote to those emotions of tumultuous excitement which would otherwise have carried me away against my reason and my will; but just then I felt the restraint almost intolerable, and I had the greatest difficulty in forcing myself to attend to her remarks and answer them with ordinary politeness; for I was sensible that Helen was standing within a few feet of me beside the fire.
I dared not look at her, but I felt her eye was upon me, and from one hasty, furtive glance, I thought her cheek was slightly flushed, and that her fingers, as she played with her watch-chain, were agitated with that restless, trembling motion which betokens high excitement.
'Tell me,' said she, availing herself of the first pause in the attempted conversation between her aunt and me, and speaking fast and low, with her eyes bent on the gold chain--for I now ventured another glance--'Tell me how you all are at Linden-hope--has nothing happened since I left you ?' 'I believe not.' 'Nobody dead?
nobody married ?' 'No.' 'Or--or expecting to marry ?--No old ties dissolved or new ones formed?
no old friends forgotten or supplanted ?' She dropped her voice so low in the last sentence that no one could have caught the concluding words but myself, and at the same time turned her eyes upon me with a dawning smile, most sweetly melancholy, and a look of timid though keen inquiry that made my cheeks tingle with inexpressible emotions.
'I believe not,' I answered.

'Certainly not, if others are as little changed as I.' Her face glowed in sympathy with mine.
'And you really did not mean to call ?' she exclaimed.
'I feared to intrude.' 'To intrude!' cried she, with an impatient gesture.

'What--' but as if suddenly recollecting her aunt's presence, she checked herself, and, turning to that lady, continued--'Why, aunt, this man is my brother's close friend, and was my own intimate acquaintance (for a few short months at least), and professed a great attachment to my boy--and when he passes the house, so many scores of miles from his home, he declines to look in for fear of intruding!' 'Mr.Markham is over-modest,' observed Mrs.Maxwell.
'Over-ceremonious rather,' said her niece--'over--well, it's no matter.' And turning from me, she seated herself in a chair beside the table, and pulling a book to her by the cover, began to turn over the leaves in an energetic kind of abstraction.
'If I had known,' said I, 'that you would have honoured me by remembering me as an intimate acquaintance, I most likely should not have denied myself the pleasure of calling upon you, but I thought you had forgotten me long ago.' 'You judged of others by yourself,' muttered she without raising her eyes from the book, but reddening as she spoke, and hastily turning over a dozen leaves at once.
There was a pause, of which Arthur thought he might venture to avail himself to introduce his handsome young setter, and show me how wonderfully it was grown and improved, and to ask after the welfare of its father Sancho.

Mrs.Maxwell then withdrew to take off her things.
Helen immediately pushed the book from her, and after silently surveying her son, his friend, and his dog for a few moments, she dismissed the former from the room under pretence of wishing him to fetch his last new book to show me.