pparently the same person
he had quitted.

Dry and clad, and decently formal under the transformation, they met at
Mrs. Collett's breakfast-table, and in each hung the doubt whether land
was the dream or sea. Both owned to a swim; both omitted mention of the
tale of white ducks. Little Collett had brought Matey's and his
portmanteau into the house, by favour of the cook, through the scullery.
He, who could have been a pictorial and suggestive narrator, carried a
spinning head off his shoulders from this wonderful Countess of Ormont to
Matey Weyburn's dark-eyed Browny at High Brent, and the Sunday walk in
Sir Peter Wensell's park. Away and back his head went. Browny was not to
be thought of as Browny; she was this grand Countess of Ormont; she had
married Matey Weyburn's hero: she would never admit she had been Browny.
Only she was handsome then, and she is handsome now; and she looks on
Matey Weyburn now just as she did then. How strange is the world! Or how
if we are the particular person destined to encounter the strange things
of the world? And fancy J. Masner, and Pinnett major, and young Oakes
(liked nothing better than a pretty girl, he strutted boasting at
thirteen), and the Frenchy, and the lot, all popping down at the table,
and asked the name of the lady sitting like Queen Esther--how they would
roar out! Boys, of course--but men, too!--very few men have a notion of
the extraordinary complications and coincidences and cracker-surprises
life contains. Here 's an instance; Matey Weyburn positively will wear
white ducks to play before Aminta Farrell on the first of May
cricketing-day. He happens to have his white ducks on when he sees the
Countess of Ormont swimming in the sea; and so he can go in just as if
they were all-right bathing-drawers. In he goes, has a good long swim
with her, and when he comes out, says, of his dripping ducks, 'tabula
votiva . . . avida vestimenta,' to remind an old schoolmate of his
hopping to the booth at the end of a showery May day, and dedicating them
to the laundry in these words. It seems marvellous. It was a quaint
revival, an hour after breakfast, for little Collett to be acting as
intermediary with Selina to request Lady Ormont's grant of a
five-minutes' interview before the church-bell summoned her. She was
writing letters, and sent the message: 'Tell Mr. Weyburn I obey.' Selina
delivered it, uttering 'obey' in a demurely comical way, as a word of
which the humour might be c