They both remained standing for a few seconds without speaking.  The face that confronted Barnet had a beautiful outline; the Raffaelesque oval of its contour was remarkable for an English countenance, and that countenance housed in a remote country-road to an unheard-of harbour.  But her features did not do justice to this splendid beginning:  Nature had recollected that she was not in Italy; and the young lady’s lineaments, though not so inconsistent as to make her plain, would have been accepted rather as pleasing than as correct.  The preoccupied expression which, like images on the retina, remained with her for a moment after the state that caused it had ceased, now changed into a reserved, half-proud, and slightly indignant look, in which the blood diffused itself quickly across her cheek, and additional brightness broke the shade of her rather heavy eyes.

‘I know I have no business here,’ he said, answering the look.  ’But I had a great wish to see you, and inquire how you were.  You can give your hand to me, seeing how often I have held it in past days?’

‘I would rather forget than remember all that, Mr. Barnet,’ she answered, as she coldly complied with the request.  ’When I think of the circumstances of our last meeting, I can hardly consider it kind of you to allude to such a thing as our past—­or, indeed, to come here at all.’

‘There was no harm in it surely?  I don’t trouble you often, Lucy.’

’I have not had the honour of a visit from you for a very long time, certainly, and I did not expect it now,’ she said, with the same stiffness in her air.  ‘I hope Mrs. Barnet is very well?’

‘Yes, yes!’ he impatiently returned.  ’At least I suppose so—­though I only speak from inference!’

‘But she is your wife, sir,’ said the young girl tremulously.

The unwonted tones of a man’s voice in that feminine chamber had startled a canary that was roosting in its cage by the window; the bird awoke hastily, and fluttered against the bars.  She went and stilled it by laying her face against the cage and murmuring a coaxing sound.  It might partly have been done to still herself.

‘I didn’t come to talk of Mrs. Barnet,’ he pursued; ’I came to talk of you, of yourself alone; to inquire how you are getting on since your great loss.’  And he turned towards the portrait of her father.

‘I am getting on fairly well, thank you.’

The force of her utterance was scarcely borne out by her look; but Barnet courteously reproached himself for not having guessed a thing so natural; and to dissipate all embarrassment, added, as he bent over the table, ‘What were you doing when I came?—­painting flowers, and by candlelight?’

‘O no,’ she said, ’not painting them—­only sketching the outlines.  I do that at night to save time—­I have to get three dozen done by the end of the month.’

Barnet looked as if he regretted it deeply.  ’You will wear your poor eyes out,’ he said, with more sentiment than he had hitherto shown.  ’You ought not to do it.  There was a time when I should have said you must not.  Well—­I almost wish I had never seen light with my own eyes when I think of that!’