“How strange men are!” thought Lucy.  “He had some unhappy secret.”

Tom Bakewell, who had a habit of coming into the room on various pretences during the nobleman’s visits, put a stop to the revelation, if his lordship intended to make any.

When they were alone again, Lucy said, smiling:  “Do you know, I am always ashamed to ask you to begin to read.”

Mountfalcon stared.  “To read?—­oh! ha! yes!” he remembered his evening duties.  “Very happy, I’m sure.  Let me see.  Where were we?”

“The life of the Emperor Julian.  But indeed I feel quite ashamed to ask you to read, my lord.  It’s new to me; like a new world—­hearing about Emperors, and armies, and things that really have been on the earth we walk upon.  It fills my mind.  But it must have ceased to interest you, and I was thinking that I would not tease you any more.”

“Your pleasure is mine, Mrs. Feverel.  ’Pon my honour, I’d read till I was hoarse, to hear your remarks.”

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Do I look so?”

Lord Mountfalcon had fine full eyes, and by merely dropping the lids he could appear to endow them with mental expression.

“No, you are not,” said Lucy.  “I must thank you for your forbearance.”

The nobleman went on his honour loudly.

Now it was an object of Lucy’s to have him reading; for his sake, for her sake, and for somebody else’s sake; which somebody else was probably considered first in the matter.  When he was reading to her, he seemed to be legitimizing his presence there; and though she had no doubts or suspicions whatever, she was easier in her heart while she had him employed in that office.  So she rose to fetch the book, laid it open on the table at his lordship’s elbow, and quietly waited to ring for candles when he should be willing to commence.

That evening Lord Mountfalcon could not get himself up to the farce, and he felt a pity for the strangely innocent unprotected child with anguish hanging over her, that withheld the words he wanted to speak, or insinuate.  He sat silent and did nothing.

“What I do not like him for,” said Lucy, meditatively, “is his changing his religion.  He would have been such a hero, but for that.  I could have loved him.”

“Who is it you could have loved, Mrs. Feverel?” Lord Mountfalcon asked.

“The Emperor Julian.”

“Oh! the Emperor Julian!  Well, he was an apostate but then, you know, he meant what he was about.  He didn’t even do it for a woman.”

“For a woman!” cried Lucy.  “What man would for a woman?”

“I would.”

“You, Lord Mountfalcon?”

“Yes.  I’d turn Catholic to-morrow.”

“You make me very unhappy if you say that, my lord.”

“Then I’ll unsay it.”

Lucy slightly shuddered.  She put her hand upon the bell to ring for lights.

“Do you reject a convert, Mrs. Feverel?” said the nobleman.