dear! that evening at Bath--I remember it as well as if it was
yesterday; and it was only two months after I had run away with your
grandfather. Yes, there was a ball that night; and we had kept very
quiet, you know, after coming back; but this time your grandfather had
set his heart on taking me out before everybody, and you know he had to
have his way. As sure as I live, Harry, the first man I saw was John
Cholmondeley--just as white as a ghost: they said he had been drinking
hard and gambling pretty nearly the whole of these two months. He
wouldn't come near me: he wouldn't take the least notice of me. The
whole night he pretended to be vastly gay and merry: he danced with
everybody, but his eyes never came near me. Well--you know what a girl
is--that vexed me a little bit; for there never was a man such a slave
to a woman as he was to me. Dear! dear! the way my father used to laugh
at him, until he got wild with anger! Well, I went up to him at last,
when he was by himself, and I said to him, just in a careless way, you
know, 'John, aren't you going to dance with me to-night?' Well, do you
know, his face got quite white again; and he said--I remember the very
words, all as cold as ice--'Madam,' says he, 'I am glad to find that
your hurried trip to Scotland has impaired neither your good looks nor
your self-command.' Wasn't it cruel of him?--but then, poor fellow! he
had been badly used, I admit that. Poor young fellow! he never did
marry; and I don't believe he ever forgot me to his dying day. Many a
time I'd like to have told him all about it, and how there was no use in
my marrying him if I liked another man better; but though we met
sometimes, and especially when he came down about the Reform Bill
time--and I do believe I made a red-hot radical of him--he was always
very proud, and I hadn't the heart to go back on the old story. But I'll
tell you what your grandfather did for him: he got him returned at the
very next election, and he on the other side, too; and after a bit a man
begins to think more about getting a seat in Parliament than about
courting an empty-headed girl. I have met this Mr. Roscorla, haven't I?"

"Of course you have."

"A good-looking man rather, with a fresh complexion and gray hair?"

"I don't know what you mean by good looks," said Trelyon shortly. "I
shouldn't think people would call him an Adonis. But there's no
accounting for tastes."

"Perhaps I may have been mistaken," the old lady