there were either too much
or too little to say about her.

I found myself engaged again with Mrs. Briss while he was occupied with
a newspaper-boy--and engaged, oddly, in very much the free view of him
that he and I had just taken of herself. She put it to me frankly that
she had never seen a man so improved: a confidence that I met with
alacrity, as it showed me that, under the same impression, I had not
been astray. She had only, it seemed, on seeing him, made him out with a
great effort. I took in this confession, but I repaid it. "He hinted to
me that he had not known you more easily."

"More easily than you did? Oh, nobody does that; and, to be quite
honest, I've got used to it and don't mind. People talk of our changing
every seven years, but they make me feel as if I changed every seven
minutes. What will you have, at any rate, and how can I help it? It's
the grind of life, the wear and tear of time and misfortune. And, you
know, I'm ninety-three."

"How young you must feel," I answered, "to care to talk of your age! I
envy you, for nothing would induce me to let you know mine. You look,
you see, just twenty-five."

It evidently too, what I said, gave her pleasure--a pleasure that she
caught and held. "Well, you can't say I dress it."

"No, you dress, I make out, ninety-three. If you _would_ only dress
twenty-five you'd look fifteen."

"Fifteen in a schoolroom charade!" She laughed at this happily enough.
"Your compliment to my taste is odd. I know, at all events," she went
on, "what's the difference in Mr. Long."

"Be so good then, for my relief, as to name it."

"Well, a very clever woman has for some time past----"

"Taken"--this beginning was of course enough--"a particular interest in
him? Do you mean Lady John?" I inquired; and, as she evidently did, I
rather demurred. "Do you call Lady John a very clever woman?"

"Surely. That's why I kindly arranged that, as she was to take, I
happened to learn, the next train, Guy should come with her."

"You arranged it?" I wondered. "She's not so clever as you then."

"Because you feel that _she_ wouldn't, or couldn't? No doubt she
wouldn't have made the same point of it--for more than one reason. Poor
Guy hasn't pretensions--has nothing but his youth and his beauty. But
that's precisely why I'm sorry for him and try whenever I can to give
him a lift. Lady John's company _is_, you see, a lift."

"You mean it has so unmistakably been one to Long?"

"Ye