"I sat in my room and painted," he said afterwards, when he was able to talk of this dreadful time, "but I didn't know what I was painting, or whether it was winter or summer. People would come in and sit down and talk to me--they came to cheer me up a little, they said. I talked to them and answered them; and when they went away I didn't know who they were, or what they had been talking about. As for my work, the right colours came on my brush somehow; but when the faces looked out at me from my canvas, I used to wonder who had painted them, and what they meant. I don't know how long that time lasted. I only know that the best and dearest friend I ever had took me across the Channel with him, and on to Italy; and one morning, after landing at some place from a steamer in the darkness, I opened my window and saw the Bay of Naples before me. I burst into tears, for the first time since my wife's death; and after that I learnt to bear my sorrow patiently." When William Crawford found himself a successful man, he built himself a house at Kensington from a design of his own. After stating which latter fact, it is quite unnecessary to say that the Italian façade was perfection, that the Alhambra-like colonnade at the back was delicious, that there was a great deal of space wasted in unnecessary passages, and that there was neither a housemaid's closet nor a dust-bin in the original plan of the mansion. But then what a charming spot was that on which Mr. Crawford planted his temple! for he was far too wise a man to erect his dwelling on one of those patches of arid waste which are called desirable building-ground. He had discovered an inconvenient old house in a delicious garden between the old court suburb and Tyburnia, and had carted away the rambling, low-roofed dwelling, and set up his dazzling white temple in its stead. The crowning glory of the place was a pair of marble fountains which the painter had brought from Rome--fountains whose silver waters had made harmonious accompaniment to the voices of revellers in Tivoli fifteen hundred years ago. It was to this pleasant home that William Crawford brought his beautiful daughter from the fashionable boarding school in which she had received her education. Her grandfather had died, leaving her the five thousand pounds that had once been allotted to her mother. Her aunts and uncles were scattered, and not one of them had been able to obtain any lasting hold upon the impulsive little heart which beat in Miss Crawford's breast. She came to the Fountains at her father's bidding, and her pretty caressing ways were very pleasant to him; but she did not fill the void in his heart. He looked in her face very sadly sometimes, for it recalled the vision of another face, with a tender, loving light in the eyes, which was wanting in Flo's flashing glances. She was such a frivolous creature compared with her mother.