Martha looked at the unknown doubtfully, yet not without favour. She was a good, conscientious girl: but she was fond of her meals, and a luncheon in the cool shade of these lovely groves would be very agreeable. She fancied, too, that the stranger would be a good caterer. He was much more carefully dressed to-day, in a gray travelling suit. Everything about him looked fresh and bright, and suggestive of easy circumstances. She began to think that Daphne was right, and that he was no Bohemian artist, living from hand to mouth, but a gentleman of position, and that it would not be so very awkward to meet him in Regent street, when she should be shopping with mamma and Jane. They strolled along the leafy aisle on the margin of the blue bright lake, faintly stirred by lightest zephyrs. They admired the marble figures of nymph and dryad, which Martha thought would have looked better if they had been more elaborately clad. They wasted half an hour in happy idleness, enjoying the air, the cool umbrage of lime and chestnut, the glory of the distant light yonder on green sward or blue placid lake, enjoying Nature as she should be enjoyed, in perfect carelessness of mind and heart—as Horace enjoyed his Sabine wood, singing his idle praise of Lalage as he wandered, empty of care. They found at last an utterly secluded spot, where no eye of military or civil authority could reach them. ‘Now, if you two young ladies will only be patient, and amuse yourselves here for a quarter of an hour or so, I will see what can be done in the smuggling line,’ said the unknown. ‘I could stay here for a week,’ said Daphne, establishing herself comfortably on the velvet turf, while Martha pulled out her work-bag and resumed her crochet-hook. ‘Take your time, Mr. Nero. I am going to sleep.’ She threw off her muslin hat, and laid her cheek upon the soft mossy bank, letting her pale golden hair fall like a veil over her neck and shoulders. They were in the heart of a green _bosquet_, far from the palace, far from the beaten track of tourists. Nero stopped at a curve in the path to look back at the recumbent figure, the sunny falling hair, the exquisite tint of cheek and chin and lips, just touched by the sun-ray glinting through a break in the foliage. He stood for a few momenta admiring this living picture, and then walked slowly down the avenue. ‘A curious idle way of wasting a day,’ he mused; ‘but when a man has nothing particular to do with his days he may as well waste them one way as another. How lovely the child is in her imperfection! a faulty beauty—a faulty nature—but full of fascination. I must write a description of her in my next letter to my dear one. How interested she would feel in this childish, undisciplined character.’