"I am glad he is doing well," I said proudly.
"Then should you be sorry for me that am in trouble," he answered. "For I have no home now, nor am like to have, but must go beyond seas and begin a new life as best I may."
"I am indeed sorry, for it is sad to be alone. If Mrs. Gaunt had not been kind to me——"
Interrupted
"And to me," he interrupted, "we should never have met. She is a good woman, your mistress Gaunt."
"Yet, I have heard that beyond seas there are many diversions," I answered, to turn the talk from myself, seeing that he was minded to be too familiar.
"For those that start with good company and pleasant companions. If I had a pleasant companion, one that would smile upon me with bright eyes when I was sad, and scold me with her pretty lips when I went astray—for there is nothing like a pretty Puritan for keeping a careless man straight."
"Oh, sir!" I cried, starting to my feet as he put his hand across the deal table to mine; and then the door opened and Elizabeth Gaunt came in.
"Sir," she said, "you have committed a breach of hospitality in entering a chamber to which I have never invited you. Will you go back to your own?"
He bowed with a courteous apology and muttered something about the temptation being too great. Then he left us alone.