"Poor little lonely boy!" "I was lonely--more lonely than you can imagine; for, kind as they were to me, I was naturally not as dear to them as their own children. I was an outsider; I have always been an outsider; so, perhaps, there is some excuse for that intense soreness on my part which you so much deprecate whenever this fact is once more brought home to me." "I am sorry that I was so hard on you," said Elisabeth, in a very penitent voice; "but it is one of my worst faults that I am always being too hard on people. Will you forgive me?" "Of course I will." And Elisabeth--also possessing charm--earned forgiveness as quickly as she had accorded it. "Please tell me more," she pleaded. "The other children were such a loud, noisy, happy-go-lucky pack, that they completely overpowered a delicate, sensitive boy. Moreover, I detested the life there--the roughness and unrefinement of it all." And Cecil's eyes filled with tears at the mere remembrance of his childish miseries. "Did you stay with them till you grew up?" "Yes; I was educated--after a fashion--with their own sons. But at last a red-letter day dawned for me. An English artist came to stay at the sheep-farm, and discovered that I also was among the prophets. He was a bachelor, and he took an uncommon fancy to me; it ended in his adopting me and bringing me to England, and making of me an artist like himself." "Another point of similarity between us!" Elisabeth cried; "my parents died when I was a baby, and I also was adopted." "I am so glad; all the sting seems to be taken out of things if I feel I share them with you." "Then where is your adopted father now?" "He died when I was five-and-twenty, Miss Farringdon; and left me barely enough to keep me from abject poverty, should I not be able to make a living by my brush." "And you have never learned anything more about your parents?" "Never; and now I expect I never shall. The friends who brought me up told me that they believed my father came from England, and had been connected with some business over here; but what the business was they did not know, nor why he left it. It is almost impossible to find out anything more, after this long lapse of time; it is over thirty years now since my parents died. And, besides, I very much doubt whether Farquhar was their real name at all." "What makes you think that?" "Because the name was carefully erased from the few possessions my poor father left behind him. So now I have let the matter drop," added Cecil, with a bitter laugh, "as it is sometimes a mistake to look up back-numbers in the colonies; they are not invariably pleasant reading." Here conversation was interrupted by Lady Silverhampton's voice calling her friends to lunch; and Cecil and Elisabeth had to join the others.