"Lady May and I are going together, you know: in a day or two we shall be at Brighton. I mean to bid Alice good-bye to-day. There--I mean at Brighton--we are to meet Vivian Darnley, and possibly another friend; and we go to meet your uncle at that pretty little town in Switzerland, where Lady May----I wonder, by-the-bye, you did not arrange to come with us; Lady May travels with us the entire time. She says there are some very interesting ruins there." "Why, dear old soul!" said Sir Richard, who felt called upon to say something to set himself right with respect to Lady May, "she's thinking of quite another place. She will be herself the only interesting ruin there." "I think you wish to vex me," said pretty Grace, turning away with a smile, which showed, nevertheless, that this kind of joke was not an unmixed vexation to her. "I don't care for ruins myself." "Nor do I," he said, archly. "But you don't think so of Lady May. I know you don't. You are franker with her than with me, and you tell her a very different tale." "I must be very frank, then, if I tell her more than I know myself. I never said a civil thing of Lady May, except once or twice, to the poor old thing herself, when I wanted her to do one or two little things, to please _you_." "Oh! come, you can't deceive me; I've seen you place your hand to your heart, like a theatrical hero, when you little fancied any one but she saw it." "Now, really, that is too bad. I may have put my hand to my side, when it ached from laughing." "How can you talk so? You know very well I have heard you tell her how you admire her music and her landscapes." "No, no--not landscapes--she paints faces. But her colouring is, as artists say, too chalky--and nothing but red and white, like--what is it like?--like a clown. Why did not she get the late Mr. Etty--she's always talking of him--to teach her something of his tints?" "You are not to speak so of Lady May. You forget she is my particular friend," says the young lady; but her pretty face does not express so much severity as her words. "I do think you like her. You merely talk so to throw dust in people's eyes. Why should not you be frank with me?" "I wish I dare be frank with you," said Sir Richard. "And why not?" "How can I tell how my disclosures might be punished? My frankness might extinguish the best hope I live for; a few rash words might make me a very unhappy man for life." "Really? Then I can quite understand that reflection alarming you in the midst of a _tête-à-tête_ with Lady May; and even interrupting an interesting conversation." Sir Richard looked at her quickly, but her looks were perfectly artless.