r, its large, jealous eyes, its elfin hands, and the sudden smile
with which, after half an hour of silence and apparent scorn, it had
rewarded Sir Wilfrid's advances. He saw himself sitting bewitched
beside it.

Poor Lady Rose! He remembered her as he and she parted at the gate of
the neglected garden, the anguish in her eyes as they turned to look
after the bent and shrunken figure of Dalrymple carrying the child back
to the house.

"If you meet any of his old friends, don't--don't say anything! We've
just saved enough money to go to Sicily for the winter--that'll set
him right."

And then, barely a year later, the line in a London newspaper which had
reached him at Madrid, chronicling the death of Marriott Dalrymple, as
of a man once on the threshold of fame, but long since exiled from the
thoughts of practical men. Lady Rose, too, was dead--many years since;
so much he knew. But how, and where? And the child?

She was now "Mademoiselle Le Breton "?--the centre and apparently the
chief attraction of Lady Henry's once famous salon?

"And, by Jove! several of her kinsfolk there, relations of the mother or
the father, if what I suppose is true!" thought Sir Wilfrid, remembering
one or two of the guests. "Were they--was she--aware of it?"

* * * * *

The old man strode on, full of a growing eagerness, and was soon on Lady
Henry's doorstep.

"Her ladyship is in the dining-room," said the butler, and Sir Wilfrid
was ushered there straight.

"Good-morning, Wilfrid," said the old lady, raising herself on her
silver--headed sticks as he entered. "I prefer to come down-stairs by
myself. The more infirm I am, the less I like it--and to be helped
enrages me. Sit down. Lunch is ready, and I give you leave to eat some."

"And you?" said Sir Wilfrid, as they seated themselves almost side by
side at the large, round table in the large, dingy room.

The old lady shook her head.

"All the world eats too much. I was brought up with people who lunched
on a biscuit and a glass of sherry."

"Lord Russell?--Lord Palmerston?" suggested Sir Wilfrid, attacking his
own lunch meanwhile with unabashed vigor.

"That sort. I wish we had their like now."

"Their successors don't please you?"

Lady Henry shook her head.

"The Tories have gone to the deuce, and there are no longer enough Whigs
even to do that. I wouldn't read the newspapers at all if I could help
it. But I do."

"So I understand,