him afresh. Would he like to know that after thirty years she had just
finished her _second_ novel, unbeknown to her brother--as she mentioned
him the little face darkened, took a strange bitterness--and it was just
about to be entrusted to the post and a publisher?

Robert was all interest, of course, and inquired the subject. Mrs. Darcy
expanded still more--could, in fact, have hugged him. But, just as she
was launching into the plot a thought, apparently a scruple of
conscience, struck her.

'Do you remember,' she began, looking at him a little darkly, askance,
'what I said about my hobbies the other day? Now, Mr. Elsmere, will you
tell me--don't mind me--don't be polite--have you ever heard people tell
stories of me? Have you ever, for instance, heard them call me
a--a--tuft-hunter?'

'Never!' said Robert heartily.

'They might,' she said, sighing. 'I _am_ a tuft-hunter. I can't help it.
And yet we _are_ a good family, you know. I suppose it was that year at
Court, and that horrid Warham afterwards. Twenty years in a cathedral
town--and a very _little_ cathedral town, after Windsor, and Buckingham
Palace, and dear Lord Melbourne! Every year I came up to town to stay
with my father for a month in the season, and if it hadn't been for
that I should have died--my husband knew I should. It was the world,
the flesh, and the devil, of course, but it couldn't be helped. But
now,' and she looked plaintively at her companion, as though challenging
him to a candid reply: 'You _would_ be more interesting, wouldn't you,
to tell the truth, if you had a handle to your name?'

'Immeasurably,' cried Robert, stifling his laughter with immense
difficulty, as he saw she had no inclination to laugh.

'Well, yes, you know. But it isn't right;' and again she sighed. 'And so
I have been writing this novel just for that. It is called--what do you
think?--"Mr. Jones." Mr. Jones is my hero--it's so good for me, you
know, to think about a Mr. Jones.'

She looked beamingly at him. 'It must be indeed! Have you endowed him
with every virtue?'

'Oh yes, and in the end, you know--' and she bent forward eagerly--'it
all comes right. His father didn't die in Brazil without children after
all, and the title----'

'What!' cried Robert, 'so he _wasn't_ Mr. Jones?'

Mrs. Darcy looked a little conscious.

'Well, no,' she said guiltily, 'not just at the end. But it _really_
doesn't matter--not to the story.'

Robert shook his head, with a