Brandon listened attentively, and when he was alone set that down also in his note-book, then considering that neither the ghost nor the young lieutenant need trouble him further, he felt that all his suspicions were cast loose into a fathomless sea, from which he could fish nothing up; but the little heir was well and happy, and he devoutly hoped that he would remain so, and save to himself the anxiety of showing, and to Valentine the pain and doubt that would come of reading the letter.

Mrs. Melcombe, narrow as were her thoughts, was, notwithstanding, a schemer in a small way.  She had felt that Brandon must have had something to say to Laura when she herself coming up had interrupted him.  Laura had few reserves from her, so when she had ascertained that nothing had occurred when she had left them together in the grandmother’s sitting-room but such talk as naturally arose out of the visit to it, she resolved to give him another opportunity, and after breakfast was about to propose a walk, when he helped her by asking her to show him that room again.

“I should like so much to have a photograph of Mr. Mortimer’s picture,” he said; “may I see it again?”

Nothing more easy.  They all went up to the room; a fire had been lighted to air it, because its atmosphere had felt chilly the day before.  Laura seated herself again on the sofa.  Brandon, with pen and ink, began trying to make a sketch of the portrait, and very soon found himself alone with Laura, as he had fully expected would be the case.  Whereupon, sitting with his back to her, and working away at his etching, he presently said—­

“I mentioned yesterday to Mrs. Melcombe that I had come on business.”

“Yes,” Laura answered.

“So as it concerns only you, I will, if you please, explain it now.”

As he leaned slightly round towards her Laura looked up, but she was mute through surprise.  There was something in this voice at once penetrative and sweet; but now she was again conscious of what sounded like a delicately-hinted reproof.

“A young man,” he proceeded, “whom I have known almost all my life—­in fact, I may call him a friend of mine—­told me of an event that had taken place—­he called it a misfortune that had befallen him.  It had greatly unsettled him, he said, for a long time; and now that he was getting over it, and wanted to forget it, he wished for a change, would like to go abroad, and asked if I could help him.  I have many foreign acquaintances.  It so chanced that I had just been applied to by one of them to send him out an Englishman, a clerk, to help him with his English correspondence.  So I proposed to this young fellow to go, and he gladly consented.”

Laura said nothing.  Brandon’s words did not lead her to think of Joseph.  So she thought of him, wishing she had been so led.  She noticed, however, a slight emphasis in the words which informed her that the young man, whoever he was, “was getting over his misfortune, and wanted to forget it.”