's invitation for Christmas.

Consider dinner despatched--the word is suitable, for an approach to
haste was countenanced or tolerated, in consideration of the household's
festivity elsewhere--and so much talking going on that the old General
could say to Gwen without fear of being overheard:--"Now tell me some
more about your fellow.... Adrian, isn't he?... He _is_ your fellow,
isn't he?--no compliments necessary?"

"He's my fellow, General, to you and all my _dear_ friends. You saw him
in July, I think?"

"Just saw him--just saw him! Hardly spoke to him--only a word or two.
Your father took me in to see him, because I was in love with his
great-grandmother, once upon a time."

"His _great_-grandmother, General? You must mean his grandmother."

"Not a bit of it, my dear! It's all quite right. I was a boy of
eighteen. I'm eighty-four. Sixty-six years ago. If Mary Tracy was alive
now, she'd make up to eighty-six. Nothing out of the way in that. She
was a girl of twenty then."

"Was it serious, General?"

"God bless me, my dear, serious? I should rather think it was! Why--we
ran away together, and went capering over the country looking for a
parson to marry us! Serious? Rather! At least, it might have been."

"Oh, General, do tell me what came of it. Did you find the parson?"

"That was just it. We found the Rector of Threckingham--it was in
Lincolnshire--and he promised to marry us in a week if he could find
someone to give the bride away. He took possession of the young lady.
Then a day or two after down comes Sir Marmaduke and Lady Tracy, black
in the face with rage, and we were torn asunder, threatening suicide as
soon as there was a chance. I was such a jolly innocent boy that I never
suspected the Rector of treachery. Never guessed it at all! He told me
thirty years after--a little more. Saw him when the Allied Sovereigns
were in London--before Waterloo."

"And that young thing was Adrian's _great_-grandmother!" said Gwen. Then
she felt bound in honour to add:--"She was old enough to know better."

"She didn't," said the General. "What's so mighty funny to me now is to
think that all that happened about the time of the Revolution in Paris.
Rather before."

Gwen's imagination felt the vertigo of such a rough grapple with the
Past. These things make brains reel. "When my old twins were two little
girls in lilac frocks," said she.

"Your _what_?" Perhaps it was no wonder--so Gwen said afterwards--that
t