looking pale and worn with the stress of it.

Mrs. Burgoyne! The girl fell into a wondering reverie. She was Mr.
Manisty's second cousin--she had lost her husband and child in some
frightful accident--she was not going to marry Mr. Manisty--at least nobody
said so--and though she went to mass, she was not a Catholic, but on the
contrary a Scotch Presbyterian, by birth, being the daughter of a Scotch
laird of old family--one General Delafield Muir--?

'She is very kind to me,' thought Lucy Foster in a rush of gratitude mixed
with some perplexity.--'I don't know why she takes so much trouble about
me. She is so different--so--so fashionable--so experienced. She can't care
a bit about me. Yet she is very sweet to me--to everybody, indeed. But--'

And again she lost herself in ponderings on the relation of Mr. Manisty to
his cousin. She had never seen anything like it. The mere neighbourhood
of it thrilled her, she could not have told why. Was it the intimacy that
it implied--the intimacy of mind and thought? It was like marriage--but
married people were more reserved, more secret. Yet of course it was only
friendship. Miss Manisty had said that her nephew and Mrs. Burgoyne were
'very great friends.' Well--One read of such things--one did not often see
them.

* * * * *

The sound of steps approaching made her lift her eyes.

It was not Alfredo, but a young man, a young Englishman apparently, who
was coming towards her. He was fair-haired and smiling; he carried his hat
under his arm; and he wore a light suit and a rose in his button-hole--this