n the least odd!" reply I, brusquely. "Why should he? He knew that
I was not aware of your existence, and that therefore you would not be a
very interesting subject to me; no doubt"--(smiling a little)--"I shall
hear all about you from him now."

He is silent.

"And do you live _here_ at this abbey"--(pointing to the card I still
hold in my hand)--"_all by yourself_?"

"Do you mean without a _wife_?" he asks, with a half-sneering smile.
"Yes--I have that misfortune."

"I was not thinking of a _wife_," say I, rather angrily. "It never
occurred to me that you could have one! you are too young--a great deal
too young!"

"_Too young_, am I? At what age, then, may one be supposed to deserve
that blessing? forty? fifty? sixty?"

I feel rather offended, but cannot exactly grasp in my own mind the
ground of offense.

"I meant, of course, had you any father? any mother?"

"Neither. I am that most affecting spectacle--an orphan-boy."

"You have no brothers and sisters, I am _sure_," say I, confidently.

"I have not, but why you should be _sure_ of it, I am at a loss to
imagine."

"You seem to take offense rather easily," I say, ingenuously. "You
looked quite cross when I said I did not think much of the flowers--and
again when I said I had forgotten your name--and again when I told you,
you were too young to have a wife: now, you know, in a large family, one
has all that sort of nonsense knocked out of one."

"Has one?" (rather shortly).

"Nobody would mind whether one were huffy or not," continue I; "they
would only laugh at one."

"What a pleasant, civil-spoken thing a large family must be!" he says,
dryly.

We have reached Sir Roger. I had set off on my little expedition feeling
rather out of conceit with my young friend, and I return with those
dispositions somewhat aggravated. We find my husband sitting where we
left him, placidly smoking and listening to the band.

"Four-and-twenty fiddlers all in a row!"

They have long finished the Uhlanenritt, and are now clashing out a
brisk Hussarenritt, in which one plainly hears the hussars' thundering
gallop, while the conductor madly waves his arms, as he has been doing
unintermittingly for the last two hours.

"You were quite wise," say I, laying my hand on the back of his chair;
"you had much the best of it! they were a great imposture!"

"Were they?" he says, taking his cigar out of his mouth, and lifting his
handsome and severe iron-gray eyes to min