more dignity than her bearing had led me to expect. "You seem so sure
about it, you know!"

"He is such a boy--such an utter child--as I said just now." I was
conscious of the weakness of saying it again, and it alone, but my
strongest arguments were too strong for direct statement.

This one, however, was not unfruitful in the end.

"And I," said Mrs. Lascelles, "how old do you think I am? Thirty-five?"

"Of course not," I replied, with obvious gallantry. "But I doubt if Bob
is even twenty."

"Well, then, you won't believe me, but I was married before I was his
age, and I am just six-and-twenty now."

It was a surprise to me. I did not doubt it for a moment; one never did
doubt Mrs. Lascelles. It was indeed easy enough to believe (so much I
told her) if one looked upon the woman as she was, and only difficult in
the prejudicial light of her matrimonial record. I did not add these
things. "But you are a good deal older," I could not help saying, "in
the ways of the world, and it is there that Bob is such an absolute
infant."

"But I thought an Eton boy was a man of the world?" said Mrs. Lascelles,
quoting me against myself with the utmost readiness.

"Ah, in some things," I had to concede. "Only in some things, however."

"Well," she rejoined, "of course I know what you mean by the other
things. They matter to your mind much more than mere age, even if I had
been fifteen years older, instead of five or six. It's the old story,
from the man's point of view. You can live anything down, but you won't
let us. There is no fresh start for a woman; there never was and never
will be."

I protested that this was unfair. "I never said that, or anything like
it, Mrs. Lascellcs!"

"No, you don't say it, but you think it!" she cried back. "It is the one
thing you have in your mind. I was unhappy, I did wrong, so I can never
be happy, I can never do right! I am unfit to marry again, to marry a
good man, even if he loves me, even if I love him!"

"I neither say nor think anything of the kind," I reiterated, and with
some slight effect this time. Mrs. Lascelles put no more absurdities
into my mouth.

"Then what do you say?" she demanded, her deep voice vibrant with
scornful indignation, though there were tears in it too.

"I think he will be a lucky fellow who gets you," I said, and meant
every word, as I looked at her well in the moonlight, with her shining
eyes, and curling lip, and fighting flush.

"Thank you, Cap