you're so devoted to Romer, and like a
brother and so forth, but I can't help considering what people say."

"Don't call Lady Totness people, Mrs. Wyburn! Think what a disagreeable,
insincere woman she is--not a bit _femme du monde_, and so exceptionally
stupid and spiteful!"

Harry stayed with her for an hour, having tea, chatting, telling her
stories against every one she didn't like, and speaking with a kind of
tender and admiring familiarity of both Valentia and Romer, in a way
that at once reassured and flattered her.

Finally, she actually found herself begging Harry to use his influence
with the young couple to be less frivolous and mondains, and not to be
always going out, which he promised to do. She even confided to him her
great wish that they had two or three children, which would steady them
down, and he warmly agreed with her, but said that he felt that on that
subject it was, perhaps, hardly for him to interfere.

Of course he confided in her, in his turn, how frightfully hard up one
was, with no one buying pictures, and outsiders winning all the big
races after having no earthly chance on any form they had shown that
season. Mrs. Wyburn positively tried to talk racing with him for a
minute or two--rather pathetically--but soon got out of her depth and
fell back on Art. She said she thought, candidly, that Harry's portrait
of his cousin was a pity.

They parted excellent friends, she even asking him as a favour not to
tell Romer the reason of his visit. To Valentia he might mention it, as
Mrs. Wyburn thought it might be a lesson to her.

Harry professed, at first, some little scruple on the point. He scarcely
liked, he said, the idea of concealing it from Romer. They always told
each other everything. But Mrs. Wyburn was afraid of her son's
anger--which she could not endure, unless _she_ was in the right--and
of appearing ridiculously meddling. Harry owned that her conduct
_might_ seem rather malicious and absurd. At last he consented, and it
was agreed that neither of them should ever say anything about it to
Romer at all.

It is scarcely necessary to say that Harry kept his promise of silence
to the letter. Had he not done so the story would at least have had the
interest of novelty, for Romer had never yet heard anything about the
expedition to the British Museum, and he never did.

A week or two later, when Mrs. Newhaven's ball at the Grafton Galleries
was described in the paper, Mrs. Wyburn