room again, her face so brimming with happiness and youth that
Alice for a moment was almost startled.

"They or something else seems to have kept you young, you dear!" she
said. "And now sit down and tell me all about yourself from the crown of
your head to the sole of your foot. You are so tall, too, Jeannie; it
will take a nice long time."

Jeannie sat down.

"So it is 'me next,' is it, as the children say?" she asked. "Very well,
me. Well, once upon a time, dear, a year ago, I was an old woman. I was
twenty-nine, if you care to know, but an old woman. For the measure of
years is a very bad standard to judge by; it tells you of years only
which have practically nothing to do with being old or young. Well, the
old woman of twenty-nine went away. And to-day she came back, a year
older in respect of years, since she is thirty now, but, oh! ever so
much younger, because---- Do you guess at all?"

Lady Nottingham put down her hot water.

"Ah! my dear," she said, "of course I guess. Or rather I don't guess; I
know. There is somebody. It is only Somebody who can interfere in our
age and our happiness. Who is it?"

"No; guess again," said Jeannie.

But again it was hardly a case of guessing. Lady Nottingham knew quite
well who it was, who in those years of Jeannie's married life had been
her constant and quiet support and stand-by, and who had found his
reward in the knowledge that he helped her to bear what had to be borne.

"Victor Braithwaite," she said, without pause. "Oh, Jeannie, is it so?
You are going to marry him? Oh, my darling, I am so glad. What a happy
man, and how well he deserves it!"

Lady Nottingham was stout and comfortable; but with extraordinary
alertness she surged out of her chair to kiss Jeannie, and upset the
table on which was her glass and her boiling water, breaking the one and
deluging the carpet with the other--a perfect Niagara of scalding fluid.
She paid not the least attention to the rising clouds of steam nor to
the glass which crashed on to the floor and was reduced to shards and
exploded fragments.

"My dear, how nice!" she said. "And he has been in love with you so
long! He will have told you that now, but I insist on the credit of
having seen it also. He behaved so splendidly, and was such a good
friend to you, without ever letting you see--for I will wager that you
did not--that he loved you."

"No, I never knew until he told me," said Jeannie, simply.

"Of course you didn