"Let's walk back together. You've had a look at the place already perhaps?" "It's very beautiful." "Yes," he assented absently, as they began to walk. If she did not stare, still she used her eyes, curiously studying his face with its suggestion of strength and that somehow rather inconsistent hint of sensitiveness. He was gloomy; that was just now only proper. She saw something that puzzled her; Mina Zabriska could have told her what it was, but she herself did not succeed in identifying Harry's watching look. She was merely puzzled at a certain shade of expression in the eyes. She had not seen it at the first moment, but it was there now as he turned to her from time to time while they sauntered along. "That's Merrion, our dower-house. But it's let now to a funny little woman, Madame Zabriska. She's rather a friend of mine, but her uncle, who lives with her, doesn't like me." He smiled as he spoke of the Major. "She's very much interested in you." "In me? Has she heard of me?" "She hears of most things. She's as sharp as a needle. I like her though." He said no more till they were back in the garden; then he proposed that they should sit down on the seat by the river. "My mother used to sit here often," he said. "She always loved to see the sun go down from the garden. She didn't read or do anything; she just sat watching." "Thinking?" Cecily suggested. "Well, hardly. Letting thoughts happen if they wanted to, perhaps. She was always rather--rather passive about things, you know. They took hold of her if--well, as I say, if they wanted to." He turned to her quickly as he asked, "Are you at all like that?" "I believe I'm only just beginning to find out that I'm anything or like anything. And, anyhow, I'm quite different from what I was yesterday." "From yesterday?" "Yes. Just by coming here, I think." "That's what I mean! Things do take hold of you then?" "This place does apparently," she answered laughing, as she leaned back on the seat, throwing her arm behind her and resting her head on it. She caught him looking at her again with marked and almost startled intensity. He was rather strange with his alternations of apparent forgetfulness and this embarrassing scrutiny. "Tell me about yourself," he asked, or rather commanded, so brusque and direct was the request. She told him about the small house and the small life she had led in it, even about the furniture and the bric-à-brac, confessing to her occasional clearances and the deception she had to practise on her father about them. He was very silent, but he was a good listener. Soon he began to smoke, but did not ask leave. This might be rudeness, but seemed a rather cousinly sort of rudeness, and was readily forgiven. "And suddenly I come to all this!" she murmured. Then with a start she added, "But I'm forgetting your mother's death and what you must feel, and chattering about myself!" "I asked you to talk about yourself. Is it such a great change to come here?"