t all events, she made a good marriage as
soon as ever she got the chance. The Hammerton family naturally
objected. You'll find all about it in those papers which have come out
lately. I believe, ladies, they were almost as much scandalized by her
learning as by her morals."

"She told Sydney Smith years after, I think," observed Stewart, "that
she had to be a wit lest people should find out she was a blue. There's
a good deal about her in the Englefield _Memoirs_. She travelled
extraordinarily for a woman in those days, and most of the real
treasures at Hammerton House come from her collections."

"I thought they were nearly all burned in a great fire, and she was
burned trying to save them," said Mrs. Shaw.

"A good many were saved," returned Fletcher; "she had rushed back to
fetch a favorite bronze, was seen hurling it out of the window--and was
never seen again."

"She must have been a very remarkable woman," commented Stewart,
meditatively, his eyes still fixed on the picture.

"Know nothing about her myself," remarked Sanderson; "Stewart knows
something about everybody. It's sickening the way he spends his time
reading gossip and calling it history."

"Gossip's like many common things, interesting when fossilized,"
squeaked a little, white-haired, pink-faced old gentleman, like an
elderly cherub in dress-clothes. He had remained at the other end of the
room because he did not care for pictures. Now he toddled a little
nearer and every one made way for him with a peculiar respect, for he
was the Master of Durham, whose name was great in Oxford and also in the
world outside it. He looked up first at the pictured face and then at
Milly Flaxman, a young cousin of Fletcher's and a scholar of Ascham
Hall, who had taken her First in Mods, and was hoping to get one in
Greats. The Master liked young girls, but they had to be clever as well
as pleasing in appearance to attract his attention.

"It's very like Miss Flaxman," he squeaked.

Every one turned their eyes from the picture to Milly, whose pale cheeks
blushed a bright pink. The blush emphasized her resemblance to her
ancestress, whose brilliant complexion, however, hinted at rouge.
Milly's soft hair was amber-colored, like that of the lady in the
picture, but it was strained back from her face and twisted in a minute
knot on the nape of her neck. That was the way in which her aunt Lady
Thomson, whose example she desired to follow in all things, did her
hair