With marriage came the feeling of an insufficiency of means, and the desire to augment them led him into business speculations of a nature which he did not in the least understand: the bubble burst, and Adrian Blisset found himself a ruined man in less than a year after his marriage. Adrienne’s mother died at her birth; the girl had never known that holy bond, however much she might have longed for it. Her father chose to lay part of the cause of his wife’s death to the anxiety induced by his extravagance and folly--moreover, he had adored her, and from the hour of her death he had been a changed man. He had his own living and that of his child to gain, but he settled nowhere. His life became nomadic. He and the little one did not sojourn long in the tents of any particular tribe. Scarce a city or a town of any importance in Europe, but had sheltered the unconscious head of the infant, or been trodden by the child’s uncertain feet, or by the sedate step of the maiden, careworn before her time, while she knew intimately many an out-of-the-way nook, unnamed by Murray, Bradshaw, or Baedeker, amongst Italian hills, deep in the sunny lands of France, Thüringian woods and slopes, or sleepy red-roofed Rhenish hamlets. A restless ghost drove the musician with his child and his violin hither and thither, never permitting him to stay long in any one place and gather substance; but ever, so soon as the novelty had worn off, seeming to drive him forth on a fresh search after--what? Adrienne had learnt at an early age to ask herself that question, and sorrowfully to give up the answer. Sometimes he was in funds, when he showered all kinds of presents upon her, and called her his dear child, his _Herzallerliebste_; but oftener they were plunged in poverty, sore, sordid, dreadful poverty. His moods varied distressingly, from kindness that had in it something fitful and sinister, up to the dark melancholy silence which was his most frequent humour. He was proud, and his pride was of a touchy and intractable kind; it offended men of business, and estranged friends and pupils. Adrienne had had many teachers and many strange lessons, and the whole had combined into a varied and truly most unconventional education. Her father had lavished musical training upon her. At Florence, where they stayed a whole year, longer than anywhere else, she had wandered about with a kind-hearted old artist, who led her about with him to the great galleries, and showed her the grandest pictures, and made her know the beautiful buildings, till she had imbibed the undying loveliness of such masterpieces as Giotto’s Campanile, or Michael Angelo’s Duomo, and had discovered that her favourite thing in Florence was the ‘Pensiero’ Medici of the last-named artist. ‘You remind me of him,’ she added, suddenly looking at Myles. And she had sat, at thirteen years of age, for a picture of ‘Gravity.’ ‘Was that what he called you?’ asked Myles.