“So you call him ‘Amelius’, do you?” he said. “I note that, Miss, as an unfavourable sign to begin with. How long, if you please, has Amelius turned schoolmarm, for your young ladyship’s benefit? Don’t you understand? Well, you’re not the only inhabitant of Great Britain who don’t understand the English language. I’ll put it plainer. When I last saw Amelius, you were learning your lessons at the Home. What ill wind, Miss, blew you in here? Did Amelius fetch you, or did you come of your own accord, without waiting to be whistled for?” He spoke coarsely but not ill-humouredly. Sally’s pretty downcast face was pleading with him for mercy, and (as he felt, with supreme contempt for himself) was not altogether pleading in vain. “If I guessed that you ran away from the home,” he resumed, “should I guess right?” She answered with a sudden accession of confidence. “Don’t blame Amelius,” she said; “I did run away. I couldn’t live without him.” “You don’t know how you can live, young one, till you’ve tried the experiment. Well, and what did they do at the Home? Did they send after you, to fetch you back?” “They wouldn’t take me back--they sent my clothes here after me.” “Ah, those were the rules, I reckon. I begin to see my way to the end of it now. Amelius gave you house-room?” She looked at him proudly. “He gave me a room of my own,” she said. His next question was the exact repetition of the question which he had put to Regina in Paris. The only variety was in the answer that he received. “Are you fond of Amelius?” “I would die for him!” Rufus had hitherto spoken, standing. He now took a chair. “If Amelius had not been brought up at Tadmor,” he said, “I should take my hat, and wish you good morning. As things are, a word more may be a word in season. Your lessons here seem to have agreed with you, Miss. You’re a different sort of girl to what you were when I last saw you.” She surprised him by receiving that remark in silence. The colour left her face. She sighed bitterly. The sigh puzzled Rufus: he held his opinion of her in suspense, until he had heard more. “You said just now you would die for Amelius,” he went on, eyeing her attentively. “I take that to be a woman’s hysterical way of mentioning that she feels interest in Amelius. Are you fond enough of him to leave him, if you could only be persuaded that leaving him was for his good?” She abruptly left the table, and went to the window. When her back was turned to Rufus, she spoke. “Am I a disgrace to him?” she asked, in tones so faint that he could barely hear them. “I have had my fears of it, before now.” If he had been less fond of Amelius, his natural kindness of heart might have kept him silent. Even as it was, he made no direct reply. “You remember how you were living when Amelius first met with you?” was all he said.