e now that there must be such cases. Of course, we
know a type of blond, nee brunette; for instance, Mrs. Senter, young
Burden's fascinating aunt, whom we suspected of having turned blond in a
single night (by the way, whom should I run across in Paris but Dicky,
grown up more or less since he chaperoned his female belongings in the
Far East). But I'm not talking of the Mrs. Senters of the world; I'm
talking of Ellaline's unexpected daughter. She has changed almost
incredibly between the ages of four and nineteen.

Before I knew Emily intended meeting me in Paris, I wrote the
school-ma'am asking that my ward might be sent, well chaperoned, to the
Gare de Lyon. It was bad enough to have to face a modern young female,
adorned with all the latest improvements and parlour tricks. It would
have been worse to face several dozens of these creatures in their lair;
therefore, I funked collecting my ward at Versailles. I was to know her
by a rose pinned on her frock in case she'd altered past recognition. It
was well, as things turned out, that I'd made the suggestion, otherwise
the girl would have had to go back to Versailles, like an unclaimed
parcel; and that would have been bad, as she had no chaperon. Something
had happened to the lady, or to the lady's relatives. I almost forget
what, now.

Instead of the dainty little Tanagra figure in smart French frills,
which I expected, there was a tall, beautiful young person, with the
bearing of an Atalanta, and the clothes of a Quakeress. She tacked my
name on to the wrong man, or I should have let her go, in spite of the
rose, so different was she from what I expected. And you'll be amused to
hear that her idea of Lionel Pendragon was embodied by old "Hannibal"
Jones, who got into my train at Marseilles. He's taken to parting his
name in the middle now, and is General Wellington-Jones. She ought to
have known my age approximately, or could have learned it if she cared
to bother; but I suppose to nineteen, forty might as well be sixty.
That's a thing to remember, if one feels the sap pulsing in one's
branches, just to remind one that after all it's not spring, but autumn.
And at the present moment, by the way, I'm not sure that I shan't need
this kind of taking down a peg, for I am feeling so young that I think I
must be growing old. I have begun to value what's left me of youth; to
take it out and look at it in all lights, like a fruit which must be
gloated over before it decays--