“There is nothing,” she said.  “Uncle Ben would most certainly have told me if any news had reached him.  I am sure that he is dead—­Robert Redmayne.”

“I think so too.  Tell me a little about yourself, if I may venture to ask?”

“You have been so thoughtful for me.  And I appreciated it.  I’m all right, Mr. Brendon.  There is still my life to live and I find ways of being useful here.”

“You are contented, then?”

“Yes.  Contentment is a poor substitute for happiness; but I am contented.”

He longed to speak intimately, yet had no excuse for doing so.

“How much I wish it was in my power to brighten your content into happiness again,” he said.

She smiled at him.

“Thank you for such a friendly wish.  I am sure you mean it.”

“Indeed I do.”

“Perhaps I shall come to London some day, and then you would befriend me a little.”

“How much I hope you will—­soon.”

“But I am dull and stupid still.  I have great relapses and sometimes cannot even endure my uncle’s voice.  Then I shut myself up.  I chain myself like a savage thing, for a time, till I am patient again.”

“You should have distractions.”

“There are plenty—­even here, though you might not guess it.  Giuseppe Doria sings to me and I go out in the launch now and then.  I always travel to and fro that way when I have to visit Dartmouth for Uncle Ben and for the household provisions.  And I am to have chickens to rear in the spring.”

“The Italian—­”

“He is a gentleman, Mr. Brendon—­a great gentleman, you might say.  I do not understand him very well.  But I am safe with him.  He would do nothing base or small.  He confided in me when first I came.  He then had a dream to find a rich wife, who would love him and enable him to restore the castle of the Doria in Italy and build up the family again.  He is full of romance and has such energy and queer, magnetic power that I can quite believe he will achieve his hopes some day.”

“Does he still possess this ambition?”

Jenny was silent for a moment.  Her eyes looked out of the window over the restless sea.

“Why not?” she asked.

“He is, I should think, a man that women might fall in love with.”

“Oh, yes—­he is amazingly handsome and there are fine thoughts in him.”

Mark felt disposed to warn her but felt that any counsel from him would be an impertinence.  She seemed to read his mind, however.

“I shall never marry again,” she said.

“Nobody would dare to ask you to do so—­nobody who knows all that you have been called to suffer.  Not for many a long day yet, I mean,” he answered awkwardly.