drooped despondently. But he had a square, obstinate chin, and his
eyes, though they seldom smiled, were keen and direct, like Miss
Winwood's. Romance had passed him by long since. He did not believe in
paragons.

"I gather, my dear Ursula," said he in a dry voice, "that our guest is
an orphan, of good Italian family, brought up in England by a guardian
now dead who lived in France. Also that he is of prepossessing
exterior, of agreeable manners, of considerable cultivation, and
apparently of no acquaintance. But what I can't make out is: what he
does for a living, how he came to be half-starved on his walking
tour--the doctor said so, you remember--where he was going from and
where he is going to when he leaves our house. In fact, he seems to be
a very vague and mysterious person, of whom, for a woman of your
character and peculiar training, you know singularly little."

Miss Winwood replied that she could not pry into the lad's private
affairs. Her brother retorted that a youth, in his physically helpless
condition, who was really ingenuous, would have poured out his life's
history into the ears of so sympathetic a woman, and have bored her to
tears with the inner secrets of his soul.

"He has high aspirations. He has told me of them. But he hasn't bored
me a bit," said Ursula.

"What does he aspire to?"

"What does any brilliant young fellow of two or three and twenty aspire
to? Anything, everything. He has only to find his path."

"Yes, but what is his path?"

"I wish you weren't so much like Uncle Edward, James," said Ursula.

"He's a damned clever old man," said Colonel Winwood, "and I wish he
had stayed here long enough to be able to put our young friend through
a searching cross-examination."

Ursula lifted her finger-bowl an inch from the doiley and carefully put
it down again. It was the evening of Colonel Winwood's arrival, and
they were lingering over coffee in the great, picture-hung and softly
lighted dining room. Having fixed the bowl in the exact centre of the
doiley, she flashed round on her brother. "My dear James, do you think
I'm an idiot?"

He took his cigar from his lips and looked at her with not unhumorous
dryness. "When the world was very young, my dear," said he, "I've no
doubt I called you so. But not since."

She stretched out her hand and tapped his. She was very fond of him.
"You can't help being a man, my poor boy, and thinking manly thoughts
of me, a woman. But I'm not an id