net appeared, and then her mild white
face, inclined a little towards him as she ascended. Evidently this very
seat was her goal; and evasion was impossible. Evasion!... Memory rushed
back and set his pulses beating. He turned boldly to the sun, and the
old lady, with a brief glance into his face, composed herself at the
other end of the little seat. She gazed out of a gentle reverie into the
golden valley. And so they sat a while. And almost as if she had
felt the bond of acquaintance between them, she presently sighed, and
addressed him: 'A very, very, beautiful view, sir.'

Lawford paused, then turned a gloomy, earnest face, gilded with
sunshine. 'Beautiful, indeed,' he said, 'but not for me. No, Miss
Sinnet, not for me.'

The old lady gravely turned and examined the aquiline profile. 'Well, I
confess,' she remarked urbanely, 'you have the advantage of me.'

Lawford smiled uneasily. 'Believe me, it is little advantage.'

'My sight,' said Miss Sinnet precisely, 'is not so good as I might wish;
though better perhaps than I might have hoped; I fear I am not much
wiser; your face is still unfamiliar to me.'

'It is not unfamiliar to me,' said Lawford. Whose trickery was this? he
thought, putting such affected stuff into his mouth.

A faint lightening of pity came into the silvery and scrupulous
countenance. 'Ah, dear me, yes,' she said courteously.

Lawford rested a lean hand on the seat. 'And have you,' he asked, 'not
the least recollection in the world of my face?'

'Now really,' she said, smiling blandly, 'is that quite fair? Think of
all the scores and scores of faces in seventy long years; and how very
treacherous memory is. You shall do me the service of REMINDING me of
one whose name has for the moment escaped me.'

'I am the son of a very old friend of yours, Miss Sinnet,' said Lawford
quietly 'a friend that was once your schoolfellow at Brighton.'

'Well, now,' said the old lady, grasping her umbrella, 'that is
undoubtedly a clue; but then, you see, all but one of the friends of my
girlhood are dead; and if I have never had the pleasure of meeting her
son, unless there is a decided resemblance, how am I to recollect HER by
looking at HIM?'

'There is, I believe, a likeness,' said Lawford.

She nodded her great bonnet at him with gentle amusement. 'You are
insistent in your fancy. Well, let me think again. The last to leave
me was Fanny Urquhart, that was--let me see--last October. Now you are
certa