"It's not only the years that are curious," said Miranda, but the hint was lost, for Charnock had turned back to the balustrade. She was still, however, inclined to persist. The details which Lady Donnisthorpe had sown in her mind, now bore their crop. Interested in the man, now that she knew him, she was also interested in his career, in his hurried migratory life, in the mystery which enveloped his youth, and all the more because of the contrast between her youth and his. He had lived for three years in some small back street of Westminster; very likely she had more than once rubbed shoulders with him in the streets on the occasions when she had come up from her home in Suffolk. That home became instantly very distinct in her memories--an old manor-house guarded by a moat of dark silent water, a house or broad red-brick chimneys whereon she had known the roses to bloom on a Christmas-day, and of leaded windows upon which the boughs of trees continually tapped. "I should like to show you my home," she said with a sudden impulse, and did not check herself before the words were spoken. "Perhaps some day," she continued hurriedly, "you will tell me of those three years you spent in Westminster." And she hoped that he had not heard the first sentence of the two. "I will make an exchange," said Charnock. "I will exchange some day, if you will, the history of my three years for the history of your trouble." He turned eagerly towards her, but she held up her hand. "Please, please!" she said in a low, shaking voice, for her distress had come back upon her. She had begun, if not to forget it, at all events to dull the remembrance of it since she had come out upon the balcony. She had, in a word, sought and found a compensation in the new friendship of this man, and a relief in his very _naïveté_. But he had brought her anxieties back to her, as he clearly understood, for he said: "That is the second time this evening. I am sorry." "The second time?" said Miranda, quickly. "Why do you say that?" "Am I wrong?" he asked. "Am I wrong in fearing that I myself have brought on you the trouble which I fancied I was to avert? I should be glad to know that I was wrong, for since I have stood here on this balcony, that fear has been growing. Your face so changed at the story I told you. At what point of it I do not know. I was not looking. Did I show you some misfortune you were unaware of, and might still be unaware of, if I had only held my tongue? In offering to shield you, did I only strike at you? I do not know, I am in the dark." He spoke in a voice of intense remorse, pleading for a proof that his fear was groundless, and Miranda did not answer him at all. "I do not ask you to speak freely now," he continued; "but sometime perhaps you will. You see, we shall be neighbours." "Neighbours!" exclaimed Miranda, and her lips parted in a smile.