anaged without her. But since then she has never been near
us and has given us rather markedly little encouragement to try and keep
up our relations with her."

I was struck with this though of course I admit I am struck with all
sorts of things. "Well," I said after a moment, "even if I could imagine
a reason for that attitude it wouldn't explain why she shouldn't have
taken account of _my_ natural interest."

"Just so." Dawling's face was a windowless wall. He could contribute
nothing to the mystery, and, quitting him, I carried it away. It was not
till I went down to see Mrs. Meldrum that it was really dispelled. She
didn't want to hear of them or to talk of them, not a bit, and it was
just in the same spirit that she hadn't wanted to write of them. She had
done everything in the world for them, but now, thank heaven, the hard
business was over. After I had taken this in, which I was quick to do,
we quite avoided the subject. She simply couldn't bear it.

THE NEXT TIME

Mrs. Highmore's errand this morning was odd enough to deserve
commemoration: she came to ask me to write a notice of her great
forthcoming work. Her great works have come forth so frequently without
my assistance that I was sufficiently entitled on this occasion to
open my eyes; but what really made me stare was the ground on which her
request reposed, and what leads me to record the incident is the train
of memory lighted by that explanation. Poor Ray Limbert, while we
talked, seemed to sit there between us: she reminded me that my
acquaintance with him had begun, eighteen years ago, with her having
come in precisely as she came in this morning to bespeak my charity for
him. If she didn't know then how little my charity was worth she is at
least enlightened about it to-day, and this is just the circumstance
that makes the drollery of her visit. As I hold up the torch to the
dusky years--by which I mean as I cipher up with a pen that stumbles
and stops the figured column of my reminiscences--I see that Lim-bert's
public hour, or at least my small apprehension of it, is rounded by
those two occasions. It was _finis_, with a little moralising flourish,
that Mrs. Highmore seemed to trace to-day at the bottom of the page.
"One of the most voluminous writers of the time," she has often repeated
this sign; but never, I daresay, in spite of her professional command
of appropriate emotion, with an equal sense of that mystery and that
sadness of thin