Alice stared at him superciliously. Lydia replied, “No. Nothing else.” “I thought you might have heard my name somewhere,” he persisted. “Perhaps I have; but I cannot recall in what connection. Why? Do you know any friend of mine?” “Oh, no. Only Lord Worthington.” “I conclude then that you are celebrated, and that I have the misfortune not to know it, Mr. Cashel Byron. Is it so?” “Not a bit of it,” he replied, hastily. “There’s no reason why you should ever have heard of me. I am much obliged to you for your kind inquiries,” he continued, turning to Alice. “I’m quite well now, thank you. The country has set me right again.” Alice, who was beginning to have her doubts of Mr. Byron, in spite of his familiarity with Lord Worthington, smiled falsely and drew herself up a little. He turned away from her, hurt by her manner, and so ill able to conceal his feelings that Miss Carew, who was watching him, set him down privately as the most inept dissimulator she had ever met. He looked at Lydia wistfully, as if trying to read her thoughts, which now seemed to be with the setting sun, or in some equally beautiful and mysterious region. But he could see that there was no reflection of Miss Goff’s scorn in her face. “And so you really took me for a ghost,” he said. “Yes. I thought at first that you were a statue.” “A statue!” “You do not seem flattered by that.” “It is not flattering to be taken for a lump of stone,” he replied, ruefully. Lydia looked at him thoughtfully. Here was a man whom she had mistaken for the finest image of manly strength and beauty in the world; and he was so devoid of artistic culture that he held a statue to be a distasteful lump of stone. “I believe I was trespassing then,” she said; “but I did so unintentionally. I had gone astray; for I am comparatively a stranger here, and cannot find my way about the park yet.” “It didn’t matter a bit,” said Cashel, impetuously. “Come as often as you want. Mellish fancies that if any one gets a glimpse of me he won’t get any odds. You see he would like people to think--” Cashel checked himself, and added, in some confusion, “Mellish is mad; that’s about where it is.” Alice glanced significantly at Lydia. She had already suggested that madness was the real reason of the seclusion of the tenants at the Warren. Cashel saw the glance, and intercepted it by turning to her and saying, with an attempt at conversational ease, “How do you young ladies amuse yourselves in the country? Do you play billiards ever?” “No,” said Alice, indignantly. The question, she thought, implied that she was capable of spending her evenings on the first floor of a public-house. To her surprise, Lydia remarked, “I play--a little. I do not care sufficiently for the game to make myself proficient. You were equipped for lawn-tennis, I think, when I saw you yesterday. Miss Goff is a celebrated lawn-tennis player. She vanquished the Australian champion last year.”