Miss Desmond had not made such very bad use of her time. With consummate tact she had contrived to detain Francis Tredethlyn at her side in all those pleasant walks, and drives, and boating excursions, which made up a great part of life at the Cedars; and it had seemed that the young man, of his own option, devoted himself to Colonel Desmond’s daughter. Julia had been clever enough to set the simple Cornishman entirely at his ease in her presence, and having done that, all the rest followed naturally enough. It was to Miss Desmond that Francis Tredethlyn confided his opinions upon every subject; it was to Miss Desmond that he applied for enlightenment when his ignorance fenced him about with cloud and darkness, and seemed to shut him out from the people round him. When the visitors at the Cedars were busy in the animated discussion of some new book whose name Francis had never heard, and whose contents would have been utterly beyond his untrained understanding, Julia would explain to him the nature of the volume, simplifying the subject with a dexterity that was all her own, but never humiliating her companion by any display of her own superiority. If art was the subject of discussion, Julia insidiously demonstrated to the Cornishman the merits and demerits of any given picture. So Francis Tredethlyn had been considerably benefited by three months of intimacy with a handsome and accomplished woman, and he began to feel something like a well-disposed Maori who had been admitted into familiar intercourse with a family of friendly settlers.