Lydia laughed. “Well, why?” “Oh, that's a secret. I'll tell you one of these days.” He had really no reason; he said this to gain time. He was always honest in his talk with men, but not always with women. “I suppose I look very young,” said Lydia. “I used to be afraid of the big boys.” “If the boys were big enough,” interposed Staniford, “they must have been afraid of you.” Lydia said, as if she had not understood, “I had hard work to get my certificate. But I was older than I looked.” “That is much better,” remarked Staniford, “than being younger than you look. I am twenty-eight, and people take me for thirty-four. I'm a prematurely middle-aged man. I wish you would tell me, Miss Blood, a little about South Bradfield. I've been trying to make out whether I was ever there. I tramped nearly everywhere when I was a student. What sort of people are they there?” “Oh, they are very nice people,” said Lydia. “Do you like them?” “I never thought whether I did. They are nearly all old. Their children have gone away; they don't seem to live; they are just staying. When I first came there I was a little girl. One day I went into the grave-yard and counted the stones; there were three times as many as there were living persons in the village.” “I think I know the kind of place,” said Staniford. “I suppose you're not very homesick?” “Not for the place,” answered Lydia, evasively. “Of course,” Staniford hastened to add, “you miss your own family circle.” To this she made no reply. It is the habit of people bred like her to remain silent for want of some sort of formulated comment upon remarks to which they assent. Staniford fell into a musing mood, which was without visible embarrassment to the young girl, who must have been inured to much severer silences in the society of South Bradfield. He remained staring at her throughout his reverie, which in fact related to her. He was thinking what sort of an old maid she would have become if she had remained in that village. He fancied elements of hardness and sharpness in her which would have asserted themselves as the joyless years went on, like the bony structure of her face as the softness of youth left it. She was saved from that, whatever was to be her destiny in Italy. From South Bradfield to Venice,--what a prodigious transition! It seemed as if it must transfigure her. “Miss Blood,” he exclaimed, “I wish I could be with you when you first see Venice!” “Yes?” said Lydia. Even the interrogative comment, with the rising inflection, could not chill his enthusiasm. “It is really the greatest sight in the world.” Lydia had apparently no comment to make on this fact. She waited tranquilly a while before she said, “My father used to talk about Italy to me when I was little. He wanted to go. My mother said afterwards--after she had come home with me to South Bradfield--that she always believed he would have lived if he had gone there. He had consumption.”