For the change she found in Alec was chiefly of an external kind, and if she had a vague feeling of a deeper change, it had scarcely yet come up into her consciousness.

When she saw the _young gentleman_ her heart sank within her.

Her friend was lost; and a shape was going about, as he did, looking awfully like the old Alec, who had carried her in his arms through the invading torrent.

Nor was there wanting, to complete the bewilderment of her feeling, a certain additional reverence for the apparition, which she must after all regard as a further development of the same person.
Mrs Forbes never asked her to the house now, and it was well for her that her friendship with Tibbie Dyster had begun.

But as she saw Alec day after day at school, the old colours began to revive out of the faded picture--for to her it was a faded picture, although new varnished.