‘I care for all goodness towards me,’ answered Genevieve, lifting her eyes with a flash of inquiry.

‘I am afraid he is as bad as ever, poor fellow,’ said Albinia, with a little smile and sigh; ’but he has behaved very well.  I must tell you that you were in the same train with him on his journey from Oxford, and he was ashamed to meet your eye.’

’Ah, I remember well.  I thought I saw him.  I was bringing George and Fanny from a visit to their aunts, and I was sure it must be Mr. Gilbert.’

‘As prudent as ever, Genevieve.’

‘It would not have been right,’ she said, blushing; ’but it was such a treat to see a Bayford face, that I had nearly sprung out of the waiting-room to speak to him at the first impulse.’

‘My poor little exile!’ said Albinia.

’No, that is not my name.  Call me my aunt’s bread-winner.  That’s my pride!  I mean my cause of thankfulness.  I could not have earned half so much at home.’

‘I hope indeed you have a home here.’

‘That I have,’ she fervently answered.  ’Oh, without being a homeless orphan, one does not learn what kind hearts there are.  Mr. and Mrs. Rainsforth seemed only to fear that they should not be good enough to me.’

‘Do you mean that you found it a little oppressive?’

’Fi donc, Madame!  Yet I must own that with her timid uneasy way, and his so perfect courtesy, they did alarm me a little at first.  I pitied them, for I saw them so resolved not to let me feel myself de trop, that I knew I was in their way.’

‘Did not that vex you?’

’Why, I suppose they set their inconvenience against the needs of their children, and my concern was to do my duty, and be as little troublesome as possible.  They pressed me to spend my evenings with them, but I thought that would be too hard on them, so I told them I preferred the last hours alone, and I do not come in unless there are others to prevent their being tete-a-tete.’

‘Very wise.  And do you not find it lonely?’

’It is my time for reading—­my time for letters—­my time for being at home!’ cried Genevieve.  ’Now however that I hope I am no longer a weight on them, Mrs. Rainsforth will sometimes ask me to come and sing to him, or read aloud, when he comes home so tired that he cannot speak, and her voice is weak.  Alas! they are both so fragile, so delicate.’

Her soul was evidently with them and with her charges, of whom there was so much to say, that the carriage came all too soon to hurry Albinia away from the sight of that buoyant sweetness and capacity of happiness.

She was rather startled by Miss Ferrars saying, ’By-the-by, Albinia, how was it that you never told us of the development of the Infant prodigy?

‘I don’t know what you mean, Aunt Gertrude.’

’Don’t you remember that boy, that Mrs. Dusautoy Cavendish’s son, whom that poor little companion of hers used to call l’Enfant prodigue.  I did not know he was a neighbour of yours, as I find from Lucy.’