o my niece, Miss Tomalin."

Never had Lashmar known her so ceremonious; never had she appeared so
observant of his demeanor during the social formality. Overcome with
astonishment at what he heard, he bowed stiffly, but submissively. The
autocrat watched him with severe eyes, and only when his salute was
accomplished did the muscles of her visage again relax. Mechanically,
he turned to bow in the same way to Miss Bride, but she at once offered
her hand with a friendly, "'low do you do?"

"My niece, Miss Tomalin." Where on earth did this niece spring from?
Everybody understood that Lady Ogram was alone in the world. Constance
had expressly affirmed it--yet here was she smiling in the most natural
way possible, as if nieces abounded at Rivenoak. Dyce managed to talk,
but he heard not a word from his own lips, and his eyes, fixed on Lady
Ogram's features, noted the indubitable fact that her complexion was
artificial. This astounding old woman, at the age of four score, had
begun to paint? So confused was Dyce's state of mind, that, on
perceiving the truth of the matter, he all but uttered an exclamation.
Perhaps only Miss Tomalin's voice arrested him.

"My aunt has told me all about your new Socialism, Mr. Lashmar. You
can't think how it has put my mind at rest! One has so felt that one
_ought_ to be a Socialist, and yet there were so many things one
couldn't accept. It's delightful to see everything reconciled--all one
wants to keep and all the new things that _must_ come!"

May had been developing. She spoke with a confidence which, on softer
notes, emulated that of her aged relative; she carried her head with a
conscious stateliness which might have been--perhaps was--deliberately
studied after the portrait in the Rivenoak dining-room. Harmonious with
this change was that in her attire; fashion had done its best to
transform the aspiring young provincial into a metropolitan Grace; the
result being that Miss Tomalin seemed to have grown in stature, to
exhibit a more notable symmetry, so that she filled more space in the
observer's eye than heretofore. For all that, she looked no older; her
self-assertion, though more elaborate, was not a bit more impressive,
and the phrases she used, the turn of her sentences, the colour of her
speech, very little resembled anything that would have fallen from a
damsel bred in the modish world. Her affectation was shot through with
spontaneity; her impertinence had a juvenile seriousn