He could not but start at this. But now he was guarding his tongue. And, as he reflected, there came back to him the vague memory of a face in church, followed by the sharper picture of a very young girl at the piano in a pleasant room--the last that he had ever been in. Gwynneth had recalled the same scene, and could see him as he had been, while she gazed upon him as he was. "I remember," he said, gravely. "So you take an interest in this little chap, Miss Gleed?" "Rather more than that," replied Gwynneth, taken out of herself in an instant, and declaring her innocence by her sudden and unconscious enthusiasm. "I love him dearly," she said from her heart: and together their eyes returned to the round sailor hat, the brown pinafore and the browner legs which were all that was now to be seen of Georgie the engrossed. "He is indeed a dear little fellow," said Carlton, smothering his sighs. "And so affectionate!" added Gwynneth, thinking of the strange pair together as she had found them. "Marvellously independent, too, for his age." "He is not quite four. You would think him older." "Indeed I would . . . And so you are his 'lady'!" "So he insists on calling me." "You seem to be very much to him," said Robert Carlton, jealously enough at heart, as he looked for once into the fine, kind, enthusiastic eyes of Gwynneth; but they fell embarrassed, and his own were quick enough to wander back to the boy. "I have been more or less alone since last autumn," said Gwynneth. "Georgie has been as much to me as I can possibly have been to him." "But he lives at the Flint House, does he not? I--I gathered he was a grandchild of the Musks." "So he is." "Are they bringing him up?" "Yes." "Kindly?" "Oh, yes--kindly. But----" "Are they fond of him?" "Touchingly so; but, of course, they are two old people." "And so you stepped in to lighten and brighten a little child's life!" Gwynneth blushed unseen; for all this time he was looking at Georgie and not at her. "You mustn't put it like that," she said, "for it isn't the case. It was quite a selfish pleasure. I was all alone. And it began by his being dreadfully ill." "What--Georgie?" "Yes, and I was able to nurse him a little. And after that we couldn't do without each other. But now we shall have to try." He had looked at her with the last quick question, and was looking still, a new anxiety in his eyes. "Do you mean that you are going away?" he said; and his tone did not conceal his disappointment. "I am sorry to say I am," replied Gwynneth, feeling all she said. "Soon?" "To-morrow." "Far?" "Abroad." "But not for long!" "A year." Her eyes fell at last before the frank trouble in his; and he ended the pause with a sigh. "I am very sorry," he said. "I was hoping that you would often bring him here to see me." Nor was any compliment taken or intended in a speech which rang with the primitive sincerity of one who had spoken very little for a very long time.