"What can I find to talk to him about?" she said to herself, for already her instinct had told her he was not one of the order of men with whom she was never at a loss for conversation. "He has only just returned from India. He won't know anything about the regular set of things one begins with. And I can see he is the sort of man that looks down upon women as inferior creatures, and hasn't tact or breeding enough to hide it. How I wish I could turn him into Beauchamp just till dinner is over. How different it would be! Only the night before last, I was sitting beside him at the Dalrymples'! Poor Beauchamp--he is certainly very nice to talk to and laugh with!" She gave a little sigh, quite unconscious that it was audible, till looking up, she found that Mr Thurston was observing her with, a slight smile on his face. She blushed--a weakness her four-and-twenty years were not often guilty of. "Hateful man!" she said to herself. Yet she could not help glancing at him again, unconcernedly as it were, just to show him she was above feeling annoyed by his rudeness. She found out what colour his eyes were now: they were grey, deep-set and penetrating. Suddenly he surprised her by beginning to speak. "I am sorry I smiled just now," he said--his voice was clear and decisive in tone--"I saw you did not like it. But I really could not help it. Your sigh was so very melancholy." "I hardly see that that is any excuse for your smiling," she replied, rather stiffly. "Perhaps not. I daresay it was quite inexcusable," he said, quietly. "I fear I am a very uncivilised being altogether," he went on. "For the last three years I have been living in an out-of-the-way part of India, where I seldom saw any Europeans but those immediately connected with my work, and you would hardly believe how strange it seems to me to be among cultivated, refined people again." "Then you are not in the army?" asked Miss Eyrecourt. "Oh, no, I am an engineer; but only a civil one," he replied. Roma looked as if she hardly understood him. "I don't suppose you know much of my sort of work, or my part of the country," he went on. "The south knows less of the north, in some ways, than the north of the south. It strikes one very forcibly when one returns home to little England, after being on the other side of the world. Still, it is natural you shouldn't know much of the north; for though we come south for variety and recreation, we cannot expect you to find pleasure in visiting such places as the Black Country or the manufacturing districts."