vie. I expect you're right in surmising that
he's been a great traveller, for he says himself that he has led a
very wandering, restless life, and he would be shocked to think I had
a nephew who didn't know how to find India upon the map. There, you've
had quite as many cherries as are good for you, I'm sure. Let us go
and see if it's dry enough to have our coffee on the lawn, while
Martha clears away."

Now although Austin was intensely tickled at the idea of Aunt Charlotte
having had a love-affair, and a love-affair that appeared to threaten
renewal, the fact was that he really felt just a little anxious. Not
that he believed for a moment that she would be such a goose as to
marry, at her age; that, he assured himself, was impossible. But it is
often the very things we tell ourselves are impossible that we fear the
most, and Austin, in spite of his curiosity to see his aunt's old flame,
looked forward to his arrival with just a little apprehension. For some
reason or other, he considered himself partly responsible for Aunt
Charlotte. The poor lady had so many limitations, she was so hopelessly
impervious to a joke, her views were so stereotyped and conventional--in
a word, she was so terribly Early Victorian, that there was no knowing
how she might be taken in and done for if he did not look after her a
bit. But how to do it was the difficulty. Certainly he could not prevent
the elderly swain from calling, and, of course, it would be only proper
that he himself should be absent when the two first came together. A
_tete-a-tete_ between them was inevitable, and was not likely to be
decisive. But, this once over, he would appear upon the scene, take
stock of the aspirant, and shape his policy accordingly. What sort of a
man, he wondered, could Mr Ogilvie be? He had actually passed through
the town not so very long ago; but then so had hundreds of strangers,
and Austin had never noticed anyone in particular--certainly no one who
was in the least likely to be the gentleman in question. There was
nothing to be done, meanwhile, then, but to wait and watch. Perhaps the
gentleman would not want to marry Aunt Charlotte after all. Perhaps, as
she herself had suggested, he had a wife and family already. Neither of
them knew anything at all about him. He might be a battered old
traveller, or an Anglo-Indian nabob, or a needy haunter of Continental
pensions, or a convict just emerged from a term of penal servitude. He
might be as r