“You were saying to Mr. Franks—?”

The quiet sincerity of her voice drew Warburton’s look.  She was sitting straight in the cane chair, her hands upon her lap, with an air of pleasant interest.

“I was saying—­oh, I forget—­it’s gone.”

“Do you often see him?” Rosamund inquired in the same calmly interested tone.

“Now and then.  He’s a busy man, with a great many friends—­like most men who succeed.”

“But you don’t mean, I hope, that he cares less for his friends of the old time, before he succeeded?”

“Not at all,” exclaimed Will, rolling upon his chair, and gazing at the distance.  “He’s the same as ever.  It’s my fault that we don’t meet oftener.  I was always a good deal of a solitary, you know, and my temper hasn’t been improved by ill-luck.”

“Ill-luck?”

Again there was sympathy in Rosamund’s knitted brow; her voice touched a note of melodious surprise and pain.

“That’s neither here nor there.  We were talking of Franks.  If anything, he’s improved, I should say.  I can’t imagine any one bearing success better—­just the same bright, good-natured, sincere fellow.  Of course, he enjoys his good fortune—­he’s been through hard times.”

“Which would have been harder still, but for a friend of his,” said Rosamund, with eyes thoughtfully drooped.

Warburton watched her as she spoke.  Her look and her voice carried him back to the Valley of Trient; he heard the foaming torrent; saw the dark fir-woods, felt a cool breath from the glacier.  Thus had Rosamund been wont to talk; then, as now, touching his elementary emotions, but moving his reflective self to a smile.

“Have you seen Miss Cross since you came back?” he asked, as if casually.

“Oh, yes.  If I stay in England, I hope to live somewhere near her.  Perhaps I shall take rooms in London, and work at water-colours and black-and-white.  Unless I go to the Basque country, where my sister is.  Don’t you think, Mr. Warburton, one might make a lot of drawings in the Pyrenees, and then have an exhibition of them in London?  I have to earn my living, and I must do something of that kind.”

Whilst Will was shaping his answer Mrs. Pomfret came toward them from the house, and the current of the conversation was turned.  Presently Ralph summoned his guest to the book-room, where they talked till the kindly hour of tea.  But before setting out for his homeward journey, Warburton had another opportunity of exchanging words with Miss Elvan in the garden.

“Well, I shall hear what you decide to do,” he said, bluffly.  “If you go to the Pyrenees—­but I don’t think you will.”

“No, perhaps not.  London rather tempts me,” was the girl’s dreamy reply.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“I must get Bertha’s advice—­Miss Cross’.”

Will nodded.  He was about to say something, but altered his mind; and so the colloquy ended.