He bowed again slightly with somewhat of deprecation to Mrs. Castlemaine as he spoke. She assured him he was quite welcome; that it was no presumption. "Are you an artist by profession, Mr. North?--Or do you take sketches for pleasure?" she asked presently, as the conversation proceeded. "Something of both, madam. I cannot say that I am dependent on my pencil. I once painted what my friends were pleased to call a good picture, and it was exhibited and bought--in Paris." "A watercolour?" "Yes, a watercolour." "I hope you got a good price for it." "Five thousand francs." "How much is that in English money?" asked Mrs. Castlemaine, after an electrified pause, for at the first moment her ideas had run to five thousand pounds. "Two hundred pounds. It was a scene taken in the Alpes-Maritimes." "You have been much abroad, Mr. North?" "Oh, very much. I have latterly been staying for more than a year in Italy." "How you must have enjoyed it?" "For the time of sojourn I did. But it will always lay on my mind in a heavy weight of repentance." "But why?" exclaimed Mrs. Castlemaine. "Because----" and there he made a pause. "In my unpardonable thoughtlessness, madam, I, roving about from spot to spot, omitted sometimes to give any family any address where news from them might find me." "And you had cause to repent not doing it?" "Bitter cause," he answered, a wrung expression resting for an instant on his face. "My father died during that time; and--there were other matters wanting me. My life, so far as that past portion of it goes, will be one of unavailing repentance." It almost seemed--at least the fancy struck Ethel--that Mr. North gave this little bit of unusual confidence--unusual in a stranger--for the benefit of Madame Guise. Certain it was, that he looked at her two or three times as he spoke; and on her face there shone a strangely sad and regretful light. In about half an hour he rose to depart. Mrs. Castlemaine offered luncheon, but he declined it. He had been a lazy lie-abed that morning, he said with a laughing smile, and it seemed but now almost that he had taken his breakfast at the Turk's Head. The impression he left behind him was not so much of a stranger, as of an acquaintance they had known, so pleasant and easy had been the intercourse during the interview; and an acquaintance they were sorry to part with. Madame Guise went with him across the lawn. Mrs. Castlemaine would have gone too, but that Ethel stopped her. "Mamma, don't," she whispered: "they may be glad to have a few moments alone. I fancy Madame Guise cannot have seen him since before her husband died: she seemed quite agitated when he came in." "True," said Mrs. Castlemaine, for once recognising reason in words of Ethel's. "What a gentlemanly young fellow he seems--in spite of that wide straw hat."