Stoke Moreton, that nice young Mr. Brown, who comes to your uncle's
chapter meetings, dined, with his sister, a very pleasing person indeed,
Ruth, in black. In fact, it was a very pleasant little gathering, so
nice and informal, and the footman did not wait at luncheon, just put
the pudding and the hot plates down to the fire; and Sir Charles so
chatty and so full of his jokes, and I always liked to hear him, though
my scent of humor is not quite the same as his. Sir Charles has a
feeling heart, Ruth. You should have heard Mr. Reynolds talk about him.
But he looked very thin and pale, my dear, and he seemed to be always so
tired, but still as pleasant as could be. And I told him he wanted a
wife to look after him, and I advised him to have an egg beaten up in
ever such a little drop of brandy at eleven o'clock, and he said he
would think about it, he did indeed, Ruth; so I just went quietly to the
house-keeper and asked her to see to it, and a very sensible person she
was, Ruth, been in the family twenty years, and thinks all the world of
Sir Charles, and showed me the damask table-cloths that were used for
the prince's visit, and the white satin coverlet, embroidered with gold
thistles, quite an heirloom, which had been worked by the ladies of the
house when James I. slept there. Think of that, my dear!"

And so Mrs. Alwynn rambled on, recounting how Charles had shown her all
the pictures himself, and the piazza where the orange and myrtle trees
were, and how she and Mrs. Reynolds had gone for a drive together, "in
a beautiful landau," etc., till they reached home.

As a rule Ruth rather shrank from travelling with Mrs. Alwynn, who
always journeyed in her best clothes, "because you never know whom you
may not meet." To stand on a platform with her was to be made
conspicuous, and Ruth generally found herself unconsciously going into
half mourning for the day, when she went anywhere by rail with her aunt.
To-day Mrs. Alwynn was more gayly dressed than ever, but as Ruth looked
at her beaming face she felt nothing but a strange pleasure in the fact
that Charles had not forgotten the little request which later events had
completely effaced from her own memory. He, it seemed, had remembered,
and, in spite of what had passed, had done what she asked him. She
wished that she could have told him she was grateful. Alas! there were
other things that she wished she could have told him; that she was sorry
she had misjudged him; t