or the name, he had used that of his wife,
Viscountess Drane in her own right,--a notorious beauty of whom, so
History recounts, he was senilely enamoured and on whose naughty
account he was eventually run through the body by a young Mohawk of a
paramour. They fought one spring dawn in the park--the traditional spot
could be seen from where Ursula Winwood was sitting.

Ursula and her brother were proud of the romantic episode, and would
relate it to guests and point out the scene of the duel. Happy and
illusory days of Romance now dead and gone! It is not conceivable that,
generations hence, the head of a family will exhibit with pride the
stained newspaper cuttings containing the unsavoury details of the
divorce case of his great-great-grandmother.

This aspect of family history seldom presented itself to Ursula
Winwood. It did not do so this mellow and contented afternoon.
Starlings mindful of a second brood chattered in the old walnut trees
far away on the lawn; thrushes sang their deep-throated bugle-calls;
finches twittered. A light breeze creeping up the avenue rustled the
full foliage languorously. Ursula Winwood closed her eyes. A bumble-bee
droned between visits to foxglove bells near by. She loved bumble-bees.
They reminded her of a summer long ago when she sat, not on this
seat--as a matter of fact it was in the old walled garden a quarter of
a mile away--with a gallant young fellow's arms about her and her head
on his shoulder. A bumble-bee had droned round her while they kissed.
She could never hear a bumble-bee without thinking of it. But the
gallant young fellow had been killed in the Soudan in eighteen
eighty-five, and Ursula Winwood's heart had been buried in his sandy
grave. That was the beginning and end of her sentimental history. She
had recovered from the pain of it all and now she loved the bumble-bee
for invoking the exquisite memory. The lithe Sussex spaniel crept
farther on her lap and her hand caressed his polished coat. Drowsiness
disintegrated the exquisite memories. Miss Ursula Winwood fell asleep.

The sudden plunging of strong young paws into her body and a series of
sharp barks and growls awakened her with a start, and, for a second,
still dazed by the drowsy invocation of the bumble-bee, she saw
approaching her the gallant fellow who had been pierced through the
heart by a Soudanese spear in eighteen eighty-five. He was dark and
handsome, and, by a trick of coincidence, was dressed in