wen's scattered information after the old snow-white head was safe on
her own pillow--she insisted on this--and its owner had been guaranteed
by Dr. Dalrymple, was really good for very little. The old lady was
Cousin Clo's little boy's old Mrs. Picture, and she was the dearest old
thing. There had been an accident at the house while they were there,
and a man and a woman had been hurt, but no fatality. The man had not
been taken to the Hospital, as his family had opposed his going on the
ground of his invulnerability. The old prizefighter was uninjured, as
well as those two nice children. They might have been killed. But as to
the nature of the accident, it remained obscure, or perhaps the
ever-present consciousness of her own experience prevented Aunt
Constance getting a full grasp of its details. The communication,
moreover, was crossed by that lady's exclamation:--"Oh dear, the events
of this afternoon!" just at the point where the particulars of the
mishap were due, to make things intelligible.

At which exclamation Gwen, suddenly alive to a restless conscious manner
of Aunt Constance's, pointed at her as one she could convict without
appeal, saying remorselessly:--"Mr. Pellew has proposed and you have
accepted him while we were away, Aunt Connie! Don't deny it. You're
engaged!"

"My dear Gwen," said Miss Dickenson, "if what you suggest were true, I
should not dream for one moment of concealing it from you. But as for
any engagement between us, I assure you there is no such thing. Beyond
showing unequivocal signs of an attachment which...."

Gwen clapped the beautiful hands, still soiled with the dirt of Sapps
Court, and shook its visible dust from her sleeve. Her laugh rang all
through the House. "_That's_ all right!" she cried. "He's shown
unequivocal signs of an attachment which. Well--what more do you want?
Oh, Aunt Connie, I'm _so_ glad!"

All that followed had for Miss Dickenson the same dream-world character,
but of a dream in which she retained presence of mind. It was needed to
maintain the pretext of unruffled custom in her communications with her
male visitor; the claim to be, before all things, normal, on the part of
both, in the presence of at least one friend who certainly knew all
about it, and another who may have known. Because there was no trusting
Gwen. However, she got through it very well.

Regrets were expressed that Sir Somebody Something had not got his
_Quarterly_ after all; but it woul