fathomed English vulgarity.'

'It would serve you right to send you to carry the invitation to go
round the gardens and houses.'

'Do you mean it, aunt?'

'Mean it? Don't you see your uncle advancing down the
road--there--accosting the clergyman--what's his name--either Towers or
Spires--something ecclesiastical I know. We only waited to reconnoitre
and see whether the numbers were unmanageable.'

'And yet he does not want to sit for Micklethwayte?'

'So you think no one can be neighbourly except for electioneering! O
Mark, I must take you in hand.'

'Meantime the host is collecting. I abscond. Which is the least showy
part of the establishment?'

'I recommend the coal cellar--'and, as he went off--'poor boy, he is a
dear good fellow, but how little he knows how to be laughed at!'

CHAPTER IV.

A NAME.

'Sigh no more lady, lady sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,
One foot on sea and one on land--
To one thing constant never.'--Old Ballad.

'So you have ventured out again,' said Lady Kirkaldy, as her nephew
strolled up to her afternoon tea-table under a great cedar tree:

'The coast being clear, and only distant shouts being heard in the
ravine--

'"Like an army defeated
The choir retreated;
And now doth fare well
In the valley's soft swell,"'

said the aunt.

'At least you have survived; or is this the reaction,' said the nephew,
putting on a languid air.

'There were some very nice people among them, on whom the pictures were
by no means thrown away. What would you say, Mark, if I told you that
I strongly suspect that I have seen your lost aunt?'

'Nonsense!' cried Mark, as emphatically as disrespectfully.

'I am not joking in the least,' said Lady Kirkaldy, looking up at him.
'I heard the name of Egremont, and made out that it belonged to a very
lady-like pretty-looking woman in gray and white; she seemed to be
trying to check and tame a bright girl of eighteen or so, who was in a
perfect state of rapture over the Vandykes. I managed to ask the
clergyman who the lady was, and he told me she was a Mrs. Egremont, who
lives with her aunt, a Miss Headworth, who boards girls for the High
School; very worthy people, he added.'

'Headworth?'

'Yes.'

'But if it were, she would have known your name.'

'Hardly. The title had not come in those days; and if she heard of us
at all it would be as Kerrs. I ventured further