ntury
novel. As she talked she rested her dull eyes on her kinsman with
wondering kindness. At last she put it to him: "Did you mean to go away
without asking for us?"

"I had thought it over, Miss Searle, and had determined not to trouble
you. You've shown me how unfriendly I should have been."

"But you knew of the place being ours, and of our relationship?"

"Just so. It was because of these things that I came down here--because
of them almost that I came to England. I've always liked to think of
them," said my companion.

"You merely wished to look then? We don't pretend to be much to look
at."

He waited; her words were too strange. "You don't know what you are,
Miss Searle."

"You like the old place then?"

Searle looked at her again in silence. "If I could only tell you!" he
said at last.

"Do tell me. You must come and stay with us."

It moved him to an oddity of mirth. "Take care, take care--I should
surprise you! I'm afraid I should bore you. I should never leave you."

"Oh you'd get homesick--for your real home!"

At this he was still more amused. "By the way, tell Miss Searle about
our real home," he said to me. And he stepped, through the window, out
upon the terrace, followed by two beautiful dogs, a setter and a young
stag-hound who from the moment we came in had established the fondest
relation with him. Miss Searle looked at him, while he went, as if she
vaguely yearned over him; it began to be plain that she was interested
in her exotic cousin. I suddenly recalled the last words I had heard
spoken by my friend's adviser in London and which, in a very crude form,
had reference to his making a match with this lady. If only Miss Searle
could be induced to think of that, and if one had but the tact to put it
in a light to her! Something assured me that her heart was virgin-soil,
that the flower of romantic affection had never bloomed there. If I
might just sow the seed! There seemed to shape itself within her the
perfect image of one of the patient wives of old.

"He has lost his heart to England," I said. "He ought to have been born
here."

"And yet he doesn't look in the least an Englishman," she still rather
guardedly prosed.

"Oh it isn't his looks, poor fellow."

"Of course looks aren't everything. I never talked with a foreigner
before; but he talks as I have fancied foreigners."

"Yes, he's foreign enough."

"Is he married?"

"His wife's dead and he's all alone in the world.