"And you?" he said. "I?" said Stella, though she knew what he meant. He nodded. "How do you like the change?--this still, quiet life in the Thames valley. Are you tired of it already? Will you pine for all the gayeties you have left?" Stella looked up at him--his eyes were still fixed on hers. "I have left no gayeties," she said. "I left a bare and horrid school that was as unlike home as the desert of Sahara is like this lovely meadow. How do I feel? As if I had been translated to Paradise--as if I, who was beginning to think that I was alone in the world I had no business to be in, had found some one friend to love----" She paused, and he, glancing at the black waistband to her white dress, said, with the tenderest, most humble voice: "I beg your pardon. Will you forgive me?--I did not know----" And his voice broke. Stella looked up at him with a smile shining through the unshed tears. "How--why should you know? Yes, I was quite alone in the world. My father died a year ago." "Forgive me," he murmured; and he laid his hand with a feather's weight on her arm. "I implore you to forgive me. It was cruel and thoughtless." "No," said Stella. "How should you know?" "If I had been anything better than an unthinking brute, I might have guessed." There was a moment's pause, then Stella spoke. "Yes, it is Paradise. I had no idea England was like this, they called it the land of fogs." "You have not seen London on a November evening," he said, with a laugh. "Most foreigners come over to England and put up at some hotel at the west-end, and judge the whole land by the London sample--very few come even so far as this. You have not been to London?" "I passed through it," said Stella, "that is all. But I heard a great deal about it last night," she added, with a smile. "Yes!" he said, with great interest--"last night?" "Yes, at Mrs. Hamilton's. She was kind enough to ask me to an evening party, and one of the guests took great pains to impress me with the importance and magnificence of London." He looked at her. "May I ask who she was?" he said. "It was not a she, but a gentleman. It was Mr. Adelstone." Lord Leycester thought a moment. "Adelstone. Adelstone. I don't know him." Before she was quite aware of it the retort slipped from her lips. "He knows you." He looked at her with a thoughtful smile. "Does he? I don't remember him. Stay, yes, isn't he a relation of Mr. Fielding's?" "His nephew," said Stella, and feeling the dark, penetrating eyes on her she blushed faintly. It annoyed her, and she struggled to suppress it, but the blush came and he saw it. "I remember him now," he said; "a tall, thin dark man. A lawyer, I believe. Yes, I remember him. And he told you about London?" "Yes," said Stella, and as she remembered the conversation of a few hours ago, her color deepened. "He is very amusing and well-informed, and he took pity on my ignorance in the kindest way. I was very grateful."