ed, and
gave him his chance.

'It was a very hot day in July, and she fell asleep on a seat under a
tree with her glass ball in her lap; she had been staring at it, I
suppose. Any way she slept on, till the sun went round and shone full on
the ball; and just as he, Mr. Jephson, that is, came into the gate, the
glass ball began to act like a burning glass and her skirt began to
smoke. Well, he waited a bit, I think, till the skirt blazed a little,
and then he rushed up and threw his coat over her skirt, and put the fire
out. And so he saved her from being a Molochaust, like you read about in
the bible.'

Merton mentally disengaged the word 'Molochaust' into 'Moloch' and
'holocaust.'

'And there she was, when I happened to come by, a-crying and carrying on,
with her head on his shoulder.'

'A pleasing group, and so they were engaged on the spot?' asked Merton.

'Not she! She held off, and thanked her preserver; but she would be
true, she said, to her lover in cocky. But before that Mr. Jephson had
taken me into his confidence.'

'And you made no objection to his winning your ward, if he could?'

'No, sir, I could trust that young man: I could trust him with Barbara.'

'His arguments,' said Merton, 'must have been very cogent?'

'He understood my situation if she married, and what I deserved,' said
Mrs. Nicholson, growing rather uncomfortable, and fidgeting in the
client's chair.

Merton, too, understood, and knew what the sympathetic arguments of
Jephson must have been.

'And, after all,' Merton asked, 'the lover has prospered in his suit?'

'This is how he got round her. He said to me that night, in private:
"Mrs. Nicholson," said he, "your niece is a very interesting historical
subject. I am deeply anxious, apart from my own passion for her, to
relieve her from a singular but not very uncommon delusion."

'"Meaning her lover in cocky," I said.

'"There is no lover in cocky," says he.

'"No Dr. Ingles!" said I.

'"Yes, there _is_ a Dr. Ingles, but he is not her lover, and your niece
never met him. I bicycled to Tutbury lately, and, after examining the
scene of Queen Mary's captivity, I made a few inquiries. What I had
always suspected proved to be true. Dr. Ingles was not present at that
ball at the Bear at Tutbury."

'Well,' Mrs. Nicholson went on, 'you might have knocked me down with a
feather! I had never asked my second cousins the question, not wanting
them to guess about my affairs.