one can see that, just to look
at her; but she will be much less bored if she has us two to travel
with. What she needs is constant companionship, bright talk, excitement.
She has come away from London, where she swims with the crowd; she has
no resources of her own, no work, no head, no interests. Accustomed to a
whirl of foolish gaieties, she wearies her small brain; thrown back upon
herself, she bores herself at once, because she has nothing interesting
to tell herself. She absolutely requires somebody else to interest her.
She can't even amuse herself with a book for three minutes together.
See, she has a yellow-backed French novel now, and she is only able to
read five lines at a time; then she gets tired and glances about her
listlessly. What she wants is someone gay, laid on, to divert her all
the time from her own inanity."

"Hilda, how wonderfully quick you are at reading these things! I see you
are right; but I could never have guessed so much myself from such small
premises."

"Well, what can you expect, my dear boy? A girl like this, brought up in
a country rectory, a girl of no intellect, busy at home with the fowls,
and the pastry, and the mothers' meetings--suddenly married offhand to a
wealthy man, and deprived of the occupations which were her salvation in
life, to be plunged into the whirl of a London season, and stranded at
its end for want of the diversions which, by dint of use, have become
necessaries of life to her!"

"Now, Hilda, you are practising upon my credulity. You can't possibly
tell from her look that she was brought up in a country rectory."

"Of course not. You forget. There my memory comes in. I simply remember
it."

"You remember it? How?"

"Why, just in the same way as I remembered your name and your mother's
when I was first introduced to you. I saw a notice once in the births,
deaths, and marriages--'At St. Alphege's, Millington, by the Rev.
Hugh Clitheroe, M.A., father of the bride, Peter Gubbins, Esq., of The
Laurels, Middleston, to Emilia Frances, third daughter of the Rev. Hugh
Clitheroe, rector of Millington.'"

"Clitheroe--Gubbins; what on earth has that to do with it? That would be
Mrs. Gubbins: this is Lady Meadowcroft."

"The same article, as the shopmen say--only under a different name. A
year or two later I read a notice in the Times that 'I, Ivor de Courcy
Meadowcroft, of The Laurels, Middleston, Mayor-elect of the Borough of
Middleston, hereby give notice, th