I wish he'd tell me and let me help him if I can.
I'll make him show me that miniature someday, for I'm interested in that girl, thought Lillian with a pensive sigh.
As he held his hand for her little foot in dismounting her at the hall door, Paul seemed to have shaken off his grave mood, for he looked up and smiled at her with his blithest expression.

But Lillian appeared to be the thoughtful one now and with an air of dignity, very pretty and becoming, thanked her young squire in a stately manner and swept into the house, looking tall and womanly in her flowing skirts.
Paul laughed as he glanced after her and, flinging himself onto his horse, rode away to the stables at a reckless pace, as if to work off some emotion for which he could find no other vent.
"Here's a letter for you, lad, all the way from some place in Italy.

Who do you know there ?" said Bedford, as the boy came back.
With a hasty "Thank you," Paul caught the letter and darted away to his own room, there to tear it open and, after reading a single line, to drop into a chair as if he had received a sudden blow.

Growing paler and paler he read on, and when the letter fell from his hands he exclaimed, in a tone of despair, "How could he die at such a time!" For an hour the boy sat thinking intently, with locked door, curtained window, and several papers strewn before him.

Letters, memoranda, plans, drawings, and bits of parchment, all of which he took from a small locked portfolio always worn about him.