Jack did not answer, but his heart gave a little sigh. "What a darling she is!" he thought. "I wonder whether Eleanor Lloyd is half as pretty. And yet, why wonder, for what is Eleanor Lloyd to me, or I to Eleanor Lloyd?" He could not keep his eyes off her, and Miss Lloyd could not keep hers off the baby. "If it were a duchess's child she couldn't take to it more kindly," said Jack to himself. "What strange creatures women are!" Presently Miss Lloyd turned with a bright look in her eye. "How good it was of you to pick up the child, and bring it away with you!" "Under the circumstances, I don't see what else I could have done," said Pomeroy, simply. "Many people would have left the child where they found it, and have satisfied themselves with telling the inmates of the nearest house of their discovery." "That is a plan I never thought of," said Jack, with a smile, "or else I should very likely have adopted it." "No, I don't think you would," said Miss Lloyd, earnestly. "In any case, now that I have saddled myself with the young shaver, I'm quite at a loss to know what to do with him." "Do with _him_, indeed!" exclaimed Miss Lloyd. "Don't you know, sir, that it's a little girl?" "I certainly didn't know anything of the kind," said the crest-fallen Jack. "But at that age they are all so much alike." "Ah, you gentlemen are very ignorant of many things." Then she added, "I suppose it would never do to take the child to Stammars." "To Stammars!" exclaimed Jack, in astonishment. "That is the place where I am living at present." "Indeed! A guest of Sir Thomas Dudgeon, I presume?" "Hardly that. My name is John Pomeroy, and I am only Sir Thomas's new secretary." "And I am Miss Lloyd. Like you, my present home is at Stammars." Pomeroy did not answer. He was confounded. But through him there shot a strange, rapturous thrill, such as he had never felt before. "I wish we were going to travel together for a thousand miles instead of three!" was the unspoken thought in his heart. "This is she whom I have secretly longed to see ever since I was quite a boy. Her name itself had always a strange fascination for me. And now I see her and know her. If there be any wit in my brain, any power of pleading in my tongue, any strength of purpose in my heart--then shall this sweet creature become my wife!"