“Is she educated?”

“Excellently,” he answered.  “She was brought up in a convent after her parents’ death.  She has read a marvellous collection of books, and she is very quick-witted and appreciative.”

“But you,” she said, “are no longer a waif.  These things are passing for you.  You cannot carry with you to the new world the things which belong to the old.”

“No prosperity should ever come to me,” he declared, firmly, “in which that child would not share to some extent.  With the first two hundred pounds I possess, if ever I do possess such a sum,” he added, with a little laugh, “I am going to send her to Vienna, to the great hospital there.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Two hundred pounds is not a large sum,” she remarked.  “Would you like me to lend it to you?”

He shook his head.

“She would not hear of it,” he said.  “In her way, she is very proud.”

“It may come of its own accord,” she whispered, softly.  “You may even have an opportunity of earning it.”

“I am doing well enough just now,” he remarked, “thanks to Mr. Weatherley, but sums of money like that do not fall from the clouds.”

They were both silent.  She seemed to be listening to the murmur of the stream.  His head was lifted to the elm tree, from somewhere among whose leafy recesses a bird was singing.

“One never knows,” she said softly.  “You yourself have seen and heard of strange things happening within the last few days.”

He came back to earth with a little start.

“It is true,” he confessed.

“There is life still,” she continued, “throbbing sometimes in the dull places, adventures which need only the strong arm and the man’s courage.  One might come to you, and adventures do not go unrewarded.”

“You talk like your brother,” he remarked.

“Why not?” she replied.  “Andrea and I have much in common.  Do you know that sometimes you provoke me a little?”

“I?”

She nodded.

“You have so much the air of a conqueror,” she said.  “You look as though you had courage and determination.  One could see that by your mouth.  And yet you are so much like the men of your nation, so stolid, so certain to move along the narrow lines which convention has drawn for you.  Oh! if I could,” she went on, leaning towards him and looking intently into his face, “I would borrow the magic from somewhere and mix a little in your wine, so that you should drink and feel the desire for new things; so that the world of Tooley Street should seem to you as though it belonged to a place inhabited only by inferior beings; so that you should feel new blood in your veins, hot blood crying for adventures, a new heart beating to a new music.  I would like, if I could, Arnold, to bring those things into your life.”

He turned and looked at her.  Her face was within a few inches of his.  She was in earnest.  The gleam in her eyes was half-provocative, half a challenge.  Arnold rose uneasily to his feet.