Ada Warren happened to raise her eyes, and beheld Lacour approaching, a smile of frank surprise on his handsome face. She was startled, and could not help showing it. Lacour, on the other hand, was very much at his ease, talked in a lightly facetious way of the antiquities in the case before them, now and then putting in a personal question. “You are in town?” he asked by parenthesis. “I am, for one day.” “I hope Mrs. Clarendon is well? Turning her thoughts, no doubt, to fox-hunting. You don’t hunt, I believe? No more do I. Fortunate I haven’t the taste, isn’t it?” Ada made no reply, continuing her inspection of the contents of the case, or appearing to do so. He moved a little away, as if to examine other cases, but was presently at her side again. Her curiosity seemed to be satisfied, and she let her eyes wander rather vaguely. “Do you often come here?” she asked, as they passed from a little group of people to an uninvaded spot a few yards away. She spoke as though against her will, merely to escape from embarrassment. “No, indeed; I am here by the merest chance, but a most happy one. I haven’t much time as a rule. The weather drove me out to-day. Are you sensitive to the weather? A sky like this weighs upon me; I haven’t a thought; I can’t follow an argument through three successive lines. You know I’m reading law?” “I rather thought you had left England.” He looked at her, raised his eyebrows slightly, and shook his head. “You don’t mean that you wish I had?” “Why should I wish it?” “I am used to that feeling in my acquaintances; they exhaust their powers of indirect emphasis in conveying to me the fact that I am _de trop_. It is refreshing to find one exception, and the one I should have desired.” Whilst speaking he took out a pocket-book, which contained loose papers; one of these he removed; but only to return it to his pocket together with the book. “Do I bore you?” he asked, bending his head down to her with graceful expectation of her reply; “or will you let me walk on with you?” “Is there anything you wish particularly to see?” Ada returned, still in the same mechanical way. “Yes; I should like you to come upstairs to the pictures. You really understand art; you can help me to appreciate the right things.”