the girl came away quite furious, and very unhappy, too. I don't
wonder at it, do you?'

'It doesn't sound very enjoyable, certainly,' said Darnell, looking
dreamily at his wife. He had not been attending very carefully to the
subject-matter of her story, but he loved to hear a voice that was
incantation in his ears, tones that summoned before him the vision of a
magic world.

'And has the young man's mother always been like this?' he said after a
long pause, desiring that the music should continue.

'Always, till quite lately, till last Sunday in fact. Of course Alice
spoke to George Murry at once, and said, like a sensible girl, that she
didn't think it ever answered for a married couple to live with the
man's mother, "especially," she went on, "as I can see your mother
hasn't taken much of a fancy to me." He told her, in the usual style, it
was only his mother's way, that she didn't really mean anything, and so
on; but Alice kept away for a long time, and rather hinted, I think,
that it might come to having to choose between her and his mother. And
so affairs went on all through the spring and summer, and then, just
before the August Bank Holiday, George spoke to Alice again about it,
and told her how sorry the thought of any unpleasantness made him, and
how he wanted his mother and her to get on with each other, and how she
was only a bit old-fashioned and queer in her ways, and had spoken very
nicely to him about her when there was nobody by. So the long and the
short of it was that Alice said she might come with them on the Monday,
when they had settled to go to Hampton Court--the girl was always
talking about Hampton Court, and wanting to see it. You remember what a
beautiful day it was, don't you?'

'Let me see,' said Darnell dreamily. 'Oh yes, of course--I sat out under
the mulberry tree all day, and we had our meals there: it was quite a
picnic. The caterpillars were a nuisance, but I enjoyed the day very
much.' His ears were charmed, ravished with the grave, supernal melody,
as of antique song, rather of the first made world in which all speech
was descant, and all words were sacraments of might, speaking not to the
mind but to the soul. He lay back in his chair, and said--

'Well, what happened to them?'

'My dear, would you believe it; but that wretched old woman behaved
worse than ever. They met as had been arranged, at Kew Bridge, and got
places, with a good deal of difficulty, in one of those char-