‘It is to be earnestly hoped that the gentleman does not prevaricate,’ said the minister, for the first time attracted by the subject. ‘I accidentally met him in the lane, and he said something to me about having lived in Malta. I think it was Malta, or Gibraltar--even if he did not say that he was born there.’ ‘His manners are no credit to his nationality,’ observed Mrs. Goodman, also speaking publicly for the first time. ‘He asked me this morning to send him out a pail of water for his process, and before I had turned away he began whistling. I don’t like whistlers.’ ‘Then it appears,’ said Somerset, ‘that he is a being of no age, no nationality, and no behaviour.’ ‘A complete negative,’ added Havill, brightening into a civil sneer. ‘That is, he would be, if he were not a maker of negatives well known in Markton.’ ‘Not well known, Mr. Havill,’ answered Mrs. Goodman firmly. ‘For I lived in Markton for thirty years ending three months ago, and he was never heard of in my time.’ ‘He is something like you, Charlotte,’ said Paula, smiling playfully on her companion. All the men looked at Charlotte, on whose face a delicate nervous blush thereupon made its appearance. ‘’Pon my word there is a likeness, now I think of it,’ said Havill. Paula bent down to Charlotte and whispered: ‘Forgive my rudeness, dear. He is not a nice enough person to be like you. He is really more like one or other of the old pictures about the house. I forget which, and really it does not matter.’ ‘People’s features fall naturally into groups and classes,’ remarked Somerset. ‘To an observant person they often repeat themselves; though to a careless eye they seem infinite in their differences.’ The conversation flagged, and they idly observed the figure of the cosmopolite Dare as he walked round his instrument in the mead and busied himself with an arrangement of curtains and lenses, occasionally withdrawing a few steps, and looking contemplatively at the towers and walls. IX. Somerset returned to the top of the great tower with a vague consciousness that he was going to do something up there--perhaps sketch a general plan of the structure. But he began to discern that this Stancy-Castle episode in his studies of Gothic architecture might be less useful than ornamental to him as a professional man, though it was too agreeable to be abandoned. Finding after a while that his drawing progressed but slowly, by reason of infinite joyful thoughts more allied to his nature than to his art, he relinquished rule and compass, and entered one of the two turrets opening on the roof. It was not the staircase by which he had ascended, and he proceeded to explore its lower part. Entering from the blaze of light without, and imagining the stairs to descend as usual, he became aware after a few steps that there was suddenly nothing to tread on, and found himself precipitated downwards to a distance of several feet.