“Do I carve wood?” he laughed as Lord Lytton might have laughed had he been asked whether he wrote novels. Did not all the world know it? The ignorance of this pretty little lady was not insulting but amusing, showing how far she was out of the world, and how little in this silent country house they knew what was going on. “Yes--a little,” he said, with again a laugh. It tickled him. Her mother had not known who Spears was--Spears the orator--the reformer--the enemy of her order--and now here was this girl who asked with that inimitable innocence, “Do you carve wood?” He was amused beyond measure. “But I could not bring a lily like that out of the softest deal,” he said; “it would break its back and lie flat--it has no anatomy. If I had a pencil----” Alice, who was full of curiosity and interest, here put the desired pencil into his hand, and he sat down at the nearest table, and with many contortions of his limbs and contractions of his lips, as if all his body was drawing, produced in bold black lines a tall lily with a twist of bindweed hanging about its lovely powerful stalk, like strength and weakness combined. “That is as near nature as you can do it without seeing it,” he said, pleased with the admiration his drawing called forth. “But if I were to treat it conventionally, I’d split the lily, and lay it flat, without light and shadow at all. I should not make a thing which is neither one nor the other, like your pattern there.” This was the way in which the man talked, assailing them on every side, interesting them, making them angry, keeping them in commotion and amusement. Lady Markham said that it had never cost her so much to be civil to any one; but she was very civil to him, polite, and sometimes even gracious. He stayed three days, and though she uttered a heartfelt thanksgiving when the dog-cart in which Paul drove him to the railway disappeared down the avenue, “Thank heaven he is gone, and your papa only comes back to-morrow!” Lady Markham herself did not deny their strange visitor justice. “But,” she said, “now he is gone, let as little as possible be said about him. I do not want to conceal anything from your papa, but I am sure he will not be pleased when he hears of it. For Paul’s sake, let as little as possible be said. I will mention it, of course, but I will not dwell upon it. It is much better that little should be said.” CHAPTER IV.