tain Clephane!"

And I thought I was to be honoured with a contemptuous courtesy; but I
was not.

"He ought to be a man, however," I went on, "and not a boy, and still
less the only child of a woman with whom you would never get on."

"So you are as sure of that," exclaimed Mrs. Lascelles, "as of
everything else!" It seemed, however, to soften her, or at least to
change the current of her thoughts. "Yet you get on with her?" she added
with a wistful intonation.

I could not deny that I got on with Catherine Evers.

"You are even fond of her?"

"Quite fond."

"Then do you find me a very disagreeable person, that she and I couldn't
possibly hit it off, in your opinion?"

"It isn't that, Mrs. Lascelles," said I, almost wearily. "You must know
what it is. You want to marry her son--"

Mrs. Lascelles smiled.

"Well, let us suppose you do. That would be quite enough for Mrs. Evers.
No matter who you were, how peerless, how incomparable in every way, she
would rather die than let you marry him at his age. I don't say she's
wrong--I don't say she's right. I give you the plain fact for what it is
worth: you would find her from the first a clever and determined
adversary, a regular little lioness with her cub, and absolutely
intolerant on that particular point."

I could see Catherine as I spoke, the Catherine I had seen last, and
liked least to remember; but the vision faded before the moonlit reality
of Mrs. Lascelles, laughing to herself like a great, naughty, pretty
child.

"I really think I must marry him," she said, "and see what happens!"

"If you do," I answered, in all seriousness, "you will begin by
separating mother and son, and end by making both their lives miserable,
and bringing the last misery into your own."

And either my tone impressed her, or the covert reminder in my last
words; for the bold smile faded from her face, and she looked longer and
more searchingly in mine than she had done as yet.

"You know Mrs. Evers exceedingly well," Mrs. Lascelles remarked.

"I did years ago," I guardedly replied.

"Do you mean to say," urged my companion, "that you have not seen her
for years?"

I did not altogether like her tone. Yet it was so downright and
straightforward, it was hard to be the very reverse in answer to it, and
I shied idiotically at the honest lie. I had quite lost sight both of
Bob and his mother, I declared, from the day I went to India until now.

"You mean until you came out