CHAPTER V.
"_A breathing sigh, a sigh for answer, A little talking of outward things._" JEAN INGELOW Ah, the weeks that followed! People ate and drank and slept, lived and loved and hated, were born and died,--the same world that it had been a little while before, yet not the same to them,--never to seem quite the same again.

A little cloud had fallen between them and it, and changed to their eyes all its proportions and hues.
They were incessantly together, riding, or driving, or walking, looking at pictures, dancing at parties, listening to opera or play.
"It seems to me Will is going it at a pretty tremendous pace somewhere," said Mr.Surrey to his wife, one morning, after this had endured for a space.

"It would be well to look into it, and to know something of this girl." "You are right," she replied.

"Yet I have such absolute faith in Willie's fine taste and sense that I feel no anxiety." "Nor I; yet I shall investigate a bit to-night at Augusta's." "Clara tells me that when Miss Ercildoune understood it was to be a great party, she insisted on ending her visit, or, at least, staying for a while with her aunt, but they would not hear of it." "Mrs.Lancaster goes back to England soon ?" "Very soon." "Does any one know aught of Miss Ercildoune's family save that Mrs.
Lancaster is her aunt ?" "If 'any one' means me, I understand her father to be a gentleman of elegant leisure,--his home near Philadelphia; a widower, with one other child,--a son, I believe; that his wife was English, married abroad; that Mrs.Lancaster comes here with the best of letters, and, for herself, is most evidently a lady." "Good.

Now I shall take a survey of the young lady herself." When night came, and with it a crowd to Mrs.Russell's rooms, the opportunity offered for the survey, and it was made scrutinizingly.
Surrey was an only son, a well-beloved one, and what concerned him was investigated with utmost care.
Scrutinizingly and satisfactorily.