'You are come to stay, of course ?' Charlotte said she had come to stay.

'But I have brought somebody with me!' 'Ah--whom ?' 'My brother happened to be at home, and I have brought him.' Miss De Stancy's brother had been so continuously absent from home in India, or elsewhere, so little spoken of, and, when spoken of, so truly though unconsciously represented as one whose interests lay wholly outside this antiquated neighbourhood, that to Paula he had been a mere nebulosity whom she had never distinctly outlined.

To have him thus cohere into substance at a moment's notice lent him the novelty of a new creation.
'Is he in the drawing-room ?' said Paula in a low voice.
'No, he is here.

He would follow me.

I hope you will forgive him.' And then Paula saw emerge into the red beams of the dancing fire, from behind a half-drawn hanging which screened the door, the military gentleman whose acquaintance the reader has already made.
'You know the house, doubtless, Captain De Stancy ?' said Paula, somewhat shyly, when he had been presented to her.
'I have never seen the inside since I was three weeks old,' replied the artillery officer gracefully; 'and hence my recollections of it are not remarkably distinct.