_Constance_, starting from the abstraction in which she has been gazing at him.--"Oh! thanks." _Bartlett_, with constraint.--"I hope you're better this morning?" _Constance._--"Yes." She has again fallen into a dreamy study of him, as unconscious, apparently, as if he were a picture before her, the effect of which is to reduce him to a state of immovable awkwardness. At last he tears himself loose from the spot on which he has been petrifying, and takes refuge in the business which has brought him into the room. _Bartlett._--"I came to look for one of my brushes. It must have dropped out of my traps here the other day." He goes up to the piano and looks about the floor, while Constance's gaze follows him in every attitude and movement. "Ah, here it is! I knew it would escape the broom under the landlady's relaxed régime. If you happen to drop anything in this room, Miss Wyatt, you needn't be troubled; you can always find it just where it fell." Miss Wyatt's fan again slips to the floor, and Bartlett again picks it up and restores it to her: "A case in point." _Constance_, blushing faintly.--"Don't do it for me. It isn't worth while." _Bartlett_, gravely.--"It doesn't take a great deal of time, and the exercise does me good." Constance faintly smiles, but does not relax her vigilance. "Isn't that light rather strong for you?" He goes to the glass doors opening on the balcony, and offers to draw down one of their shades. _Constance._--"It doesn't make any difference." _Bartlett_, bluffly.--"If it's disagreeable it makes some difference. Is it disagreeable?" _Constance._--"The light's strong"--Bartlett dashes the curtain down--"but I could see the mountain." He pulls the curtain up. _Bartlett._--"I beg your pardon." He again falls into statue-like discomposure under Miss Wyatt's gaze, which does not seek the distant slopes of Ponkwasset, in spite of the lifted curtain. _Constance._--"What is the name? Do you know?" _Bartlett._--"Whose? Oh! Ponkwasset. It's not a pretty name, but it's aboriginal. And it doesn't hurt the mountain." Recovering a partial volition, he shows signs of a purpose to escape, when Miss Wyatt's next question arrests him. _Constance._--"Are you painting it, Mr.--Bartlett?" _Bartlett_, with a laugh.--"Oh no, I don't soar so high as mountains; I only lift my eyes to a tree here and there, and a bit of pasture and a few of the lowlier and friendlier sort of rocks." He now so far effects his purpose as to transfer his unwieldy presence to a lateral position as regards Miss Wyatt. The girl mechanically turns her head upon the pillow and again fixes her sad eyes upon him. _Constance._--"Have you ever been up it?" _Bartlett._--"Yes, half a dozen times." _Constance._--"Is it hard to climb--like the Swiss mountains?" _Bartlett._--"_You_ must speak for the Swiss mountains after you've tried Ponkwasset, Miss Wyatt. I've never been abroad." _Constance_, her large eyes dilating with surprise.--"Never been abroad?"