urned to the young man to whom I suppose I have a right to turn,
since he has asked me to marry him. At that moment I felt that it was
such a comfort he was there; steady and reliable and conscientious.

"Mr. Brace!" I appealed to him a little shyly. "If you would be so kind!
I wonder if you would mind--I'm afraid I shall have to ask you to take
my aunt home?"

"Oh--er--yes, I should be delighted," said Mr. Brace quickly, but
flushing all over his blonde face and looking suddenly and acutely
miserable.

It was a great astonishment to me that the young man wasn't off to carry
out this wish of mine before it had finished leaving my lips. Still, it
wasn't his fault at all. Oh, no; I see his point of view quite well.

"That is--Do you think, perhaps, that your aunt might not find it
distasteful to be addressed by me? You see the last time she spoke to
me, it was--er--not on the friendliest terms, and--er----"

"Aw, look here, Mr. Brace, don't you worry!" broke in the joyously,
matter-of-fact voice of London's Love. "You stay with your young lady
and come on to lunch. Her aunt's being attended to all right without
you. Look at that!"

"That" was certainly an unexpected scene towards which Miss Vi Vassity
waved her tightly gloved hand.

I gazed in wonder in that direction.

There, on the pavement at the end of the turning into the Strand, stood
the scraggy, erect, grey-clad, frumpily hatted figure of my Aunt
Anastasia. And beside her, close beside her, was the Honourable James
Burke! He must have broken away from the group almost at the moment that
she did, and gone up to her.

What could he have said?

The "cheek" of that man! Is there anybody that he wouldn't mind
tackling?

For he was leaning confidentially towards my so forbidding aunt. He was
talking fluently to her about something. He was smiling down at her--I
caught the curve of his cheek in profile.

And--could it be true?--my Aunt Anastasia actually didn't mind him!

I only saw her back; but you know how expressive backs can be. And the
usually rigid, flat shoulders with the Victorian corset-ridge, and the
lady-like waist and scarcely existent hips of my aunt were positively
expressing mollification, friendliness, gratification!

"The old girl's all right with Jim to look after her," said Miss Vi
Vassity, cheerfully to me, adding, with a large wink: "What worked the
trick with her was the cue 'Ballyneck Castle,' I bet you. Me and Nellie
and the res