Was there a faint smile in the little girl’s limpid simple eyes? He thought so, and it disconcerted him strangely. She made no response to that protestation, but with a little nod of her head went away. Waring sat down at the table again, and began to think it all over from the beginning. He was sore and aching, like a man who has fallen from a height. He had fallen from the pedestal on which, to Frances, he had stood all these years. She might not be aware of it even--but he was. And he had fallen from those Elysian fields of peace in which he had been dwelling for so long. They had not, perhaps, seemed very Elysian while he was secure of their possession. They had been monotonous in their stillness, and wearied his soul. But now that he looked back upon them, a new cycle having begun, they seemed to him like the very home of peace. He had not done anything to forfeit this tranquillity; and yet it was over, and he stood once more on the edge of an agitated and disturbed life. He was a man who could bear monotony, who liked his own way, yet liked that bondage of habit which is as hard as iron to some souls. He liked to do the same things at the same time day after day, and to be undisturbed in doing them. But now all his quiet was over. Constance would have a thousand requirements such as Frances had never dreamed of; and her brother no doubt would soon turn up--that step-brother whom Waring had never been able to tolerate even when he was a child. She might even come Herself--who could tell? When this thought crossed his mind, he got up hastily and left the _salone_, leaving the lamp burning, as Domenico found it next morning, to his consternation--a symbol of Chaos come again--burning in the daylight. Mr Waring almost fled to his room and locked his door in the horror of that suggestion. And this was not only because the prospect of such a visit disturbed him beyond measure, but because he had not yet made a clean breast of it. Frances did not yet know all.