He looked at her with some curiosity, and a great deal of interest. What could the private reason of a young girl be? “You have, perhaps,” he said, “friends there?” Lydia shook her head. “If you are our cousin, Mr. Brotherton, and going to know all about us--” “_If_ I am your cousin! Do you think I am making a false claim, Miss Joscelyn?” he said. “--then you will soon know about Harry,” said Lydia, going on in the same breath. “I have a brother who went away a great many years ago. We don’t know where he is, or anything about him; but I am sure if I could go abroad I should find him--that is why I am always so anxious to talk to anyone who has been there.” “Where?” he said. “Abroad.” Lydia said the word with all simplicity. “Abroad” meant everything to her. It meant the place in which Harry was, and where she should certainly find him if she got there. When she said “Italy” she meant much the same thing. Not Italy, of which she knew little, except by the stories in the “Book of Beauty;” but a vague and beautiful place in which everything that was wonderful happened, and in which it would be natural that this should happen too. But Brotherton, whose knowledge was more precise, was puzzled. He did not know whether to follow out this line of conversation, which promised to become intimate, or to go back to subjects personal to himself. He had no right to inquire into the story of the family prodigal, he thought; but still, as the door had been opened to him, how was he to turn from it? “I have gone abroad since ever I can remember,” he said; “my mother, as I tell you, is never so happy in England as out of it. She is rather an invalid, and she cannot bear the cold. When I was a boy I scarcely knew where my home was.”