After that nothing was said for a minute or two; and Hubert, stooping down, picked up a few pebbles, and began jerking them with his thumb into the laurels. ‘Have you come back to town for the winter?’ asked Sophy at length. ‘I don’t know,’ said the other absently. Sophy stole a glance at her companion. ‘I don’t think uncle will be able to make up his mind to go away at all this autumn. I think it such a pity.’ To this Blake made no reply; he only went on pelting the bushes. ‘The Colmans called here yesterday,’ began Sophy once more. ‘They came to tell us that Edmund Colman has taken a first-class.’ ‘Most awful prig!’ murmured Hubert under his breath. ‘I am going to have three hundred snowdrop bulbs set in the grass-borders in October,’ said Sophy, changing the subject. ‘Don’t you think they will look very nice?’ ‘I dare say.’ Sophy said no more; and Hubert got up to return to the house. As he looked round before moving away, he was struck by the expression on Sophy’s face, as she bent over her work, and he sat down again. ‘What’s the matter, Sophy? Have I offended you in any way?’ ‘No.’ ‘Is it because I didn’t write to say I was coming? Surely----’ ‘Oh no; not at all.’ ‘There is something. Don’t let us have a misunderstanding, for Heaven’s sake. If I have hurt you, tell me frankly what it is.’ ‘It is only this,’ said Sophy, gathering courage, ‘that our old relations seem to have changed entirely. Before you went away you used to be interested in our little doings. Now you don’t care at all. We don’t seem to belong to the same family now. You tell us nothing about yourself. You go away for two years, and----’ Sophy stopped suddenly. ‘Oh, dear me!’ Hubert groaned within himself; but when he spoke his tone was kind and gentle. ‘The fact is, Sophy, I’m spoiled for want of something to do. It would do me all the good in the world to be forced to earn my bread as a day-labourer for twelve months. But I haven’t the pluck to do it.’ ‘You have your profession,’ said Sophy. ‘I’m sick of it. Everything seems so dull and tasteless, as if nothing were really worth anything. I’m tired of my life--tired of myself, I suppose, that is. Do you never feel like that?’ Sophy sighed inaudibly, and made no reply. ‘I’ve a great mind to put twenty pounds in my pocket, go to New York, and try to make a living there somehow. I suppose I’d fail: and I don’t see that it would very much matter. Nothing does matter very much, does it?’ ‘Not if one lives for one’s self,’ said Sophy. She feared she had said too much, but her companion did not seem to notice it. ‘By the way,’ he said after a pause, ‘that young cousin you’ve heard me speak of, Alec Lindsay, has just come up to town. I ought to be civil to him. He’s not a bad sort of fellow--a little countrified, that’s all. He gives one the feeling of there being a good deal in him, that will come out some day. Do you mind my asking my uncle if I may invite him to come here and dine some evening?’