He was very silent, but he was a good listener. Soon
he began to smoke, but did not ask leave. This might be rudeness, but
seemed a rather cousinly sort of rudeness, and was readily forgiven.

"And suddenly I come to all this!" she murmured. Then with a start she
added, "But I'm forgetting your mother's death and what you must feel,
and chattering about myself!"

"I asked you to talk about yourself. Is it such a great change to come
here?"

"Immense! To come here even for a day! Immense!" She waved her hand a
moment and found him following it with his eyes as it moved.

"You don't look," he said slowly, "as if it was any change at all."

"What do you mean?" she asked, interested in what he seemed to suggest.

"You fit in," he murmured, looking up at the house--at the window of
Addie Tristram's room. "And you're very poor?" he asked.

"Yes. And you----!"

"Oh, I'm not rich as such things go. The estate has fallen in value very
much, you know. But----" He broke off, frowning a little. "Still we're
comfortable enough," he resumed.

"I should think so. You'd always have it to look at anyhow. What did you
think I should be like?"

"Anything in the world but what you are."

The tone was at once too sincere and too absent for a compliment. Cecily
knew herself not to be plain; but he was referring to something else
than that.

"In fact I hardly thought of you as an individual at all. You were the
Gainsboroughs."

"And you didn't like the Gainsboroughs?" she cried in a flash of
intuition.

"No, I didn't," he admitted.

"Why not?"

"A prejudice," answered Harry Tristram after a pause.

She crossed her legs, sticking one foot out in front of her and looking
at it thoughtfully. He followed the movement and slowly broke into a
smile; it was followed by an impatient shrug. With the feminine instinct
she pushed her gown lower down, half over the foot. Harry laughed. She
looked up, blushing and inclined to be angry.

"Oh, it wasn't that," he said, laughing again rather contemptuously.
"But----" He rose, took some paces along the lawn, and then, coming
back, stood beside her, staring at the Blent and frowning rather
formidably.

"Did you see me when I first saw you by the Pool?" he asked in a moment.

"Yes. How you hurried after me!"

Another pause followed, Harry's frown giving way to a smile, but a
perplexed and reluctant one. Cecily watched him with puzzled
interest--still sitting with her foot stuck out i