"I have been poor for a long time--poor compared with what I was. Most of my money has gone--on the fool's way. I haven't come here to lament over it. It's one of my rules never, if I can help it, to think of the past. What has been, has been; and what will be, will be. When I fume and rage like an idiot, that's only the blood in me getting the better of the brain; an example of the fault that always wrecks me. Do you think I cannot see myself? Just now, I couldn't keep back the insensate words--insensate because useless--but I judged myself all the time as distinctly as I do now it's over." "Your money gone, Reuben?" murmured his sister, in consternation. "You might have foreseen that. Come and sit down by me, Miriam. I am tired and wretched. Where is the sun? Surely one may have sunshine at Naples!" He was now idly fretful. Miriam seated herself at his side, and he took her hand. "I thought you might perhaps receive me like this at first. I came only with that hope. I wish you looked better, Miriam. How do you employ yourself here?" "I am much out of doors. I get stronger." "You spoke of old Mallard. I'm glad he is here, really glad. You know, Mallard's a fellow of no slight account; I should think you might even like him." "But yourself, Reuben?" "No, no; let me rest a little. I'm sick and tired of myself. Let's talk of old Mallard. And what's become of little Cecily Doran?" "She is here--with her aunt." "She here too! By Jove! Well, of course, I shall have nothing to do with them. Mallard still acting as her guardian, I suppose. Rather a joke, that. I never could get him to speak on the subject. But I feel glad you know him. He's a solid fellow, tremendously conscientious; just the things you would like in a man, no doubt. Have you seen any of his paintings?" Miriam shook her head absently, unable to find voice for the topic, which was remote from her thoughts. "He's done fine things, great things. I shall look him up, and we'll drink a bottle of wine together." He kept stroking Miriam's hand, a white hand with blue veins--a strong hand, though so delicately fashioned. The touch of the wedding-ring again gave a new direction to his discursive thoughts. "After this, shall you go back to that horrible hole in Lancashire?" "I hope to go back home, certainly." "Home, home!" he muttered, impatiently. "It has made you ill, poor girl. Stay in Italy a long time, now you are once here. For you to be here at all seems a miracle; it gives me hopes." Miriam did not resent this, in word at all events. She was submitting again to physical oppression; her head drooped, and her abstracted gaze was veiled with despondent lassitude. Reuben talked idly, in loose sentences. "Do you think of me as old or young, Miriam?" he asked, when both had kept silence for a while. "I no longer think of you as older than myself."