ad
taken so great an interest in Austin when last he had been at the
Court; and here Aunt Charlotte chimed in, being naturally anxious to
hear all about the wonderful old lady who had known Austin's father so
well in years gone by, and remembered his mother too. Of course St
Aubyn said, as in duty bound, that he hoped the countess would have
the pleasure of meeting Austin's aunt some day under his own roof, and
Aunt Charlotte acknowledged the courtesy in fitting terms.

So the visit was quite a success, and Austin felt much more at his
ease now that he could talk to his aunt about St Aubyn as one whom
they both knew. She, on her side, was delighted with her new
acquaintance, particularly as he seemed quite familiar with Austin's
ethical and intellectual eccentricities, and did not seem horrified at
them in the very least. The only thing that disturbed her just a
little was the state of the boy's health. His spirits were as good as
ever, and he seemed quite indifferent to the fact that he was not
robust and hale; but there could be no doubt that he was paler and
more fragile than he ought to have been, and the uneasiness he was
fain to acknowledge in his hip and back worried her not a
little--more, in fact, a great deal than it worried Austin himself.

The truth was that his attention was taken up with something wholly
different. The allusions to his unknown mother that had been made by
Lady Merthyr Tydvil, and the cropping-up of the same subject during St
Aubyn's visit, had somehow connected themselves in his mind with the
mysterious appearance of the strange lady at the garden gate on the
evening of the tea-party at the vicarage. Lady Merthyr Tydvil had
recognised a strong resemblance between his mother as she had known
her and himself, and he had noticed the very same thing in the
strange lady. There were the same dark eyes, the same long, pale face,
even (as far as he could judge) the same shade in colour of the hair.
He would have thought little or nothing of this had it not been for
the inexplicable and almost miraculous vanishing of the figure when
there was absolutely nowhere for it to vanish to. Austin knew nothing
of such happenings; with all his reading he had never chanced to open
a single book that dealt with phenomena of this class, much less any
written by scientific and sober investigators, so that the entire
subject was an undiscovered country to him. Had he done so, his
perplexity would not have been