"I am very glad to hear that, for I am going farther myself, to the outer edge of Yorkshire, where I believe I am to do wonderful execution upon the birds. A fellow I know has taken a shooting-box yonder, and writes me most flourishing accounts of the sport. I know Holborough a little, by the way. Does your father live in the town?" "O, no; papa could never endure to live in a small country town. Our house is a couple of miles away--Arden Court; perhaps you know it?" "Yes, I have been to Arden Court," the traveller answered, with rather a puzzled air. "And your papa lives at Arden?--I did not know he had any other daughter," he added in a lower key, to himself rather than to his companion. "Then I suppose I have the pleasure of speaking to Miss--" "My name is Lovel My father is Marmaduke Lovel, of Arden Court." The traveller looked at her with a still more puzzled air, as if singularly embarrassed by this simple announcement. He recovered himself quickly, however, with a slight effort. "I am proud and happy to have made your acquaintance, Miss Lovel," he said; "your father's family is one of the best and oldest in the North Riding." After this, they talked of many things; of Clarissa's girlish experiences at Belforet; of the traveller's wanderings, which seemed to have extended all over the world. He had been a good deal in India, in the Artillery, and was likely to return thither before long. "I had rather an alarming touch of sunstroke a year ago," he said, "and was altogether such a shattered broken-up creature when I came home on sick leave, that my mother tried her hardest to induce me to leave the service; but though I would do almost anything in the world to please her, I could not bring myself to do that; a man without a profession is such a lost wretch. It is rather hard upon her, poor soul; for my elder brother died not very long ago, and she has only my vagabond self left. 'He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.'" "I have no mother," Clarissa said mournfully; "mine died when I was quite a little thing. I always envy people who can speak of a mother." "But, on the other hand, I am fatherless, you see," the gentleman said, smiling. But Clarissa's face did not reflect his smile. "Ah, that is a different thing," she said softly. They went on talking for a long while, talking about the widest range of subjects; and their flight across the moonlit country, which grew darker by-and-by, as that tender light waned, seemed swifter than Clarissa could have imagined possible, had the train been the most desperate thing in the way of an express. She had no vulgar commonplace shyness, mere school-girl as she was, and she had, above all, a most delightful unconsciousness of her own beauty; so she was quickly at home with the stranger, listening to him, and talking to him with a perfect ease, which seemed to him a natural attribute of high breeding.