poor Miss
Julia's mottled countenance.

"Then I must give up the idea of that story. They would think I meant
their ancestor, and that would never do. I'm sorry, because I never felt
so inclined to write anything before. But I'm very glad you told me, Mr.
Gillon."

"But they wouldn't mind a bit, Miss Brabazon! They're not in the least
sensitive about him," I assured her.

"I couldn't think of it," replied Miss Julia, haughtily. "It would be in
the very worst of taste."

"But Uvo would love it. He's full of the old villain. He might help you
if you'd let him. He's at the British Museum at this moment, getting
deeper and deeper into what he calls the family mire."

"I happen to see him coming down the road," observed Miss Julia, dryly.
"I must really beg that you will not refer to the subject again, Mr.
Gillon."

But in her voice and manner there was a hesitating reluctance that
emboldened me to use my own judgment about that, especially when Uvo
Delavoye (whose mother and sister were keen Brabazonians) himself
introduced the topic on joining us, with a gratuitous remark about his
"unfilial excavations in Bloomsbury."

"I've opened up a new lazar-house this very day," he informed us, with
shining eyes, when Miss Julia had shown an interest in spite of herself.

"By the way," I cut in, "don't you think it would all make magnificent
material for a novel, Uvo?"

"If you could find anybody to publish it!" he answered, laughing.

"You wouldn't mind if he was put into a book--and the place as well?"

"_I_ wouldn't, if nobody else didn't! Why? Who's thinking of doing us
the honour?"

Dear Miss Julia coughed and laughed with delicious coyness. My liberty
had been condoned.

"Was it you, Miss Brabazon?" cried Uvo, straightening his face with the
nerve that never failed him at a climax.

"Well, it was and it wasn't," she replied, exceeding slyly. "I did think
I should like to write a little story about Witching Hill House, and put
in rather a bad character; at least he would begin by being rather
undesirable, perhaps. But I was forgetting that the place had been in
your family, Mr. Delavoye. I certainly never knew, until Mr. Gillon told
me, that one of the Lords Mulcaster had been--er--perhaps--no better
than he ought to have been."

"To put it mildly," said Delavoye, with smiling face and shrieking eyes.
"You may paint the bad old hat as black as mine, Miss Brabazon, and
still turn him out a saint compared wit