It was a lovely Sunday afternoon on which Myles took his way to Stonegate. He found Adrienne alone. She said her uncle was taking his afternoon airing in his bath-chair in the garden, and did not wish to be disturbed; his old servant, Brandon, was with him. ‘But sit down,’ she continued, ‘and we can have a talk.’ With that she picked up her knitting and began to work. ‘You will talk,’ said Myles, ‘if you keep your promise. You promised to tell me about yourself.’ ‘Do you really want to hear that?’ ‘I came on purpose.’ ‘Well, I will tell it you, and I hope it will have the effect I intend.’ ‘What effect is that?’ ‘You are determined to look upon me (I have seen it, so don’t be at the trouble of denying it) as something fine and delicate, and unused to roughness and hardship.’ ‘Yes, one can see plainly enough that you are that.’ ‘Can one? Well, I’ll begin my story, and you shall learn how appearances may deceive.’ Adrienne related well. She did not exaggerate; there was nothing strained, no striving after effect; but there was colour, pathos, life, in her tale, and a subtle poetry thrown over all, by her way of looking at things. Myles, in listening, felt as if he were actually wandering with her on that nomadic life she spoke of; through the great foreign capitals, and the country villages, and the towns, big and little; to be sojourning with her in the gay, feverish watering-places; to survey the distant, rose-tinted Alps. He utterly forgot where he was, and knew only her and her life. There had been two brothers, she told him, of whom her father was the younger, and her uncle the elder. Kith and kin, they had none, and their patrimony was small. Both were gifted, but in different ways. Adrian, her father, was artist to the marrow of his bones. Richard, her uncle, had also some taste for art, but more of the analytical and critical than of the synthetic description; he had been, moreover, at one time, a practical man of business, and had made money--he was not rich, but thoroughly independent. Her father had had the gift of spending, not of making. The brothers had parted early. Adrian, as soon as he was his own master, had said farewell to home, and had gone, first to Germany, there to study the music which his soul loved, and which had beautified his otherwise weary, disappointed life. Some time was spent in Germany; then two or three years in miscellaneous and somewhat aimless travel; then back again to Germany, to music, and to love. The fair, clever, and penniless daughter of a poor professor and man of science won his heart, as he hers, and they married.