obody does. Everybody looks at everybody else, as though
_they_ should have known him, but nothing comes of it.

"Well, he was just the funniest old thing," says Sir Mark, laughing, at
some absurd recollection. "Well, he is gone now, and

'I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat
And the breeches, and all that,
_Were_ so queer.'

"And bless me, what a temper he had," says Sir Mark, laughing again at
his quotation. "His clothes and his temper were old Blount's principal
features. Hideous old monster he was too."

"Is she hideous?" ask Portia.

"N-o. She is well enough; she isn't a bit like him, if we forget the
clothes and temper. She says her mother was very beautiful."

"I never knew a woman whose mother wasn't beautiful, once the mother was
dead," says Roger. "Sort of thing they tell you the moment they get the
chance."

Five o'clock has struck some time ago. Evening is coming on apace. On
the dry, smooth-shaven lawn, outside, the shadows are lengthening,
stretching themselves indolently as though weary from all the
hide-and-seek they have been playing, since early dawn, in the nooks and
corners of the quaint old garden.

June has not yet quite departed; its soft, fresh glory still gilds the
edge of the lake, and lends a deeper splendor to the golden firs that
down below are nodding to the evening breeze; it is the happiest time of
all the year, for

"What is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then heaven tries the earth, if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays."

"Well, the mother is dead and gone now, this many a year," says Sir
Mark, "and the old fellow went nearly out of his mind when Julia married
Beaufort."

"Oh! she is married?" says Portia.

"Dear Portia, didn't I _tell_ you she had children?" says Dulce,
reproachfully. "She married an Indian Nabob with an aristocratic name
and a _lac_ of rupees, as she believed, but there was a flaw somewhere,
and--er--how was it Dicky?"

"Simplest thing out," says Dicky. "He had a lack of rupees, indeed, as
she found out when he died. It is only the difference of one letter
after all, and that can't count for much."

"Her father, old Charley, left her everything, so she isn't badly off
now," says Sir Mark, "but the Nabob was a sell."

"I wonder if Portia