"It was the way he spoke," she assured herself; "he could not have been in earnest. Did he mean a proposal of marriage? If so, he was very indifferent and uncertain about it, as he is about everything. He's so detached and superior, hardly like a human being. I won't think about him any more. He is gone, and I know, in spite of his aggravating ways, we shall miss him intensely. If one was in trouble, how reliable he would be! And yet what a contradiction he is! He seems to watch Aunt Cecily's difficulties with perfect indifference. I cannot, cannot understand him." The following day Adrienne met Miss Preston in the village. She had been visiting little Agatha. She was in a white serge gown with black straw hat and a black scarf about her shoulders. And she looked worn and weary but strikingly handsome and distinguished. "It was kind of you to send me those flowers," she said; "though they're but an emblem, and of no use to the one who is gone—yet one appreciates the kind thought." "I have been so sorry for you," said Adrienne; "you must be very lonely." "I am strangely bewildered," she said with a very sweet smile; "I am like a horse without his rider, or a scale without weights. My very reason for existence gone. I shall take time to adapt myself to life again, so I'm staying in my retreat quite quietly. Will you come and see me?" "Certainly I will. What do you think of little Agatha?" "She does not bear talking about," was the grave reply; "it is an effort to get into her environment, and a bigger effort to get out of it, do you not find it so?" "I hope I do," said Adrienne slowly; "it is what she would wish, is it not?" Then they parted, and in a few days' time Adrienne made her promised visit. The cottage on Le Sourge surprised her. One big living-room downstairs and a small back kitchen, two large bedrooms above, and a smaller one in the roof. The walls of all were covered with water-colour sketches of a purity and delicacy that proved the genius of the author of them. They were mostly landscapes. Sunsets from the hills outside Rome, and bits of the Mediterranean from Naples and Sicily. Queer little Italian villages up against the sky in the folds of the hills; peasants with carts of hay, trucks of fruit, milk-cans on dog-carts, and beautiful girls, amongst the grapes in vineyards, girls with black hair, with golden, and with flaming red tresses. Adrienne caught her breath as she looked at them. "What an artist your brother must have been!" she said. "He was," Miss Preston replied quietly. She was evidently not going to discuss her brother, for she began to talk of other things. Incidentally Adrienne learnt that she had relations in Yorkshire. She had an uncle who was Canon in York Cathedral, and another uncle who was a retired General and lived in the family place in Westmorland. It was when Adrienne began to talk about her uncles that she told her this.