“It is rather a large house, is it not, for three—­I beg your pardon, for four persons to live in, Mr. Sutherland?”

“It is, indeed; it quite bewilders me.”

“To tell the truth, I don’t quite know above the half of it myself.”

Hugh thought this rather a strange assertion, large as the house was; but she went on: 

“I lost myself between the housekeeper’s room and my own, no later than last week.”

I suppose there was a particle of truth in this; and that she had taken a wrong turning in an abstracted fit.  Perhaps she did not mean it to be taken as absolutely true.

“You have not lived here long, then?”

“Not long for such a great place.  A few years.  I am only a poor relation.”

She accompanied this statement with another swift uplifting of the eyelids.  But this time her eyes rested for a moment on Hugh’s, with something of a pleading expression; and when they fell, a slight sigh followed.  Hugh felt that he could not quite understand her.  A vague suspicion crossed his mind that she was bewitching him, but vanished instantly.  He replied to her communication by a smile, and the remark: 

“You have the more freedom, then.—­Did you know Harry’s mother?” he added, after a pause.

“No.  She died when Harry was born.  She was very beautiful, and, they say, very clever, but always in extremely delicate health.  Between ourselves, I doubt if there was much sympathy—­that is, if my uncle and she quite understood each other.  But that is an old story.”

A pause followed.  Euphra resumed: 

“As to the freedom you speak of, Mr. Sutherland, I do not quite know what to do with it.  I live here as if the place were my own, and give what orders I please.  But Mr. Arnold shows me little attention—­he is so occupied with one thing and another, I hardly know what; and if he did, perhaps I should get tired of him.  So, except when we have visitors, which is not very often, the time hangs rather heavy on my hands.”

“But you are fond of reading—­and writing, too, I suspect;” Hugh ventured to say.

She gave him another of her glances, in which the apparent shyness was mingled with something for which Hugh could not find a name.  Nor did he suspect, till long after, that it was in reality slyness, so tempered with archness, that, if discovered, it might easily pass for an expression playfully assumed.

“Oh! yes,” she said; “one must read a book now and then; and if a verse”—­again a glance and a slight blush—­“should come up from nobody knows where, one may as well write it down.  But, please, do not take me for a literary lady.  Indeed, I make not the slightest pretensions.  I don’t know what I should do without Harry; and indeed, indeed, you must not steal him from me, Mr. Sutherland.”

“I should be very sorry,” replied Hugh.  “Let me beg you, as far as I have a right to do so, to join us as often and as long as you please.  I will go and see how he is.  I am sure the boy only wants thorough rousing, alternated with perfect repose.”