She was seated in the window, close to the Claude, which had been the first thing that brought these two together; but to-night she was in no meditative mood. She had provided herself with work, and was laboring at it fiercely in a way which Powys had never seen before. And he did not know that her heart too was beating very fast, and that she had been wondering and wondering whether he would have the courage to come up stairs. He had really had that courage, but now that he was there, he did not know what to do. He came up to her at first, but she kept on working and did not take any notice of him, she who up to this moment had always been so sweet. The poor young fellow was cast down to the very depths; he thought they had but taken him up and played upon him for their amusement, and that now the end had come. And he tried, but ineffectually, to comfort himself with the thought that he had always known it must come to an end. Almost, when he saw her silence, her absorbed looks, the constrained little glance she gave him as he came into the room, it came into his mind that Sara herself would say something to bring the dream to a distinct conclusion. If she had told him that she divined his presumption, and that he was never more to enter that room again, he would not have been surprised. It had been a false position throughout--he knew that, and he knew that it must come to an end. But, in the mean time, a fair face must be put upon it. Powys, though he was a backwoodsman, knew enough of life, or had sufficient instinct of its requirements, to know that. So he went up to the Claude, and looked at it sadly, with a melancholy he could not restrain. “It is as you once said, Miss Brownlow,” said Powys--“always the same gleam and the same ripples. I can understand your objections to it now.” “The Claude?” said Sara, with unnecessary vehemence, “I hate it. I think I hate all pictures; they are so everlastingly the same thing. Did Jack go out, Mr. Powys, as you came up stairs?” “Yes; he went out just after you had left us,” said Powys, glad to find something less suggestive on which to speak. “Again?” said Sara, plunging at the new subject with an energy which proved it to be a relief to her also. “He is so strange. I don’t know if papa told you; he is giving us a great deal of trouble just now. I am afraid he has got fond of somebody very, very much below him. It will be a dreadful thing for us if it turns out to be true.” Poor Powys’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He gave a wistful look at his tormentor, full of a kind of dumb entreaty. What did she say it for? was it for him, without even the satisfaction of plain-speaking, to send him away for ever? “Of course you don’t know the circumstances,” said Sara, “but you can fancy when he is the only son. I don’t think you ever took to Jack; but of course he is a great deal to papa and me.”