if the Hewishes of Roscarna are remembered,
for modern memories are short, and in Gabrielle's day the illustrated
Sunday newspapers had not contrived to specialise in the smiles of
well-connected young Irishwomen.

Of course the Payne episode--I'm not sure it should not rather be called
the Payne miracle--had always lain stored somewhere in my literary attic;
its theme was too exciting for a man who deals in such lumber to have
forgotten; but that admirable woman, Mrs. Payne, had whetted my curiosity
to such an extent that I weakly promised her secrecy before she told it
to me. "I can't resist telling you," she said, "because it wouldn't be
fair of me to deprive you: it's far too much in your line." She even
flattered me: "You'd do it awfully well too, you know; but I have a sort
of sentimental regard for her--not admiration, or anything of that kind,
but an indefinite feeling that _noblesse oblige_. In her own
extraordinary way she did us a good turn, and however carefully you
wrapped it up she might recognise her portrait and feel embarrassed.
It's she that I'm thinking of, not Arthur. Arthur was too young at the
time to realize what was happening, and if he saw your picture of two
women desperately fighting over the soul or body of a boy of seventeen
who resembled himself I doubt if he'd tumble to the portrait. He's a
dear transparently honest person like his father. Still, I don't want to
hurt her, and so, if you want the story, you must gloat over it in
private, and cherish it as an unwritten masterpiece. Probably if you
_did_ write it, it wouldn't be a masterpiece at all. Console yourself
with that."

She told me her story--for of course I gave her the promise that she
demanded--in a midge-infested corner of the garden at Overton, while
Arthur, the unconscious subject of it, was playing tennis with the
clergyman's daughter whom he married a year later. I think Mrs. Payne
knew that this affair was coming off, and offered me the tale as a
combination of oral confession and Nunc Dimittis, watching the boy while
she told it to me with a sort of hungry maternal satisfaction, as
somebody whom she had not only brought into the world but for whose
salvation she was responsible. No doubt she had put up a hard fight for
him and had every reason to be satisfied, though Gabrielle shared the
honours of the mother's triumph in her own defeat. We sat there talking
until all the birds were silent, but a single blackb