llustration: "She caught sight of Hardy."]

"It's a long time since you and I met, Miss Nugent," he said, bowing.

"Mr. Hardy?" said the girl, doubtfully.

"Yes, miss," interposed Mr. Wilks, anxious to explain his position. "He
called in to see me; quite a surprise to me it was. I 'ardly knowed
him."

"The last time we three met," said Hardy, who to his host's discomfort
had resumed his chair, "Wilks was thrashing me and you were urging him
on."

Kate Nugent eyed him carefully. It was preposterous that this young man
should take advantage of a boy and girl acquaintance of eleven years
before--and such an acquaintance!--in this manner. Her eyes expressed a
little surprise, not unmixed with hauteur, but Hardy was too pleased to
have them turned in his direction at all to quarrel with their
expression.

"You were a bit of a trial in them days," said Mr. Wilks, shaking his
head. "If I live to be ninety I shall never forget seeing Miss Kate
capsized the way she was. The way she----"

"How is your cold?" inquired Miss Nugent, hastily.

"Better, miss, thankee," said Mr. Wilks.

"Miss Nugent has forgotten and forgiven all that long ago," said Hardy.

"Quite," assented the girl, coldly; "one cannot remember all the boys and
girls one knew as a child."

"Certainly not," said Hardy. "I find that many have slipped from my own
memory, but I have a most vivid recollection of you."

Miss Nugent looked at him again, and an idea, strange and incredible,
dawned slowly upon her. Childish impressions are lasting, and Jem Hardy
had remained in her mind as a sort of youthful ogre. He sat before her
now a frank, determined-looking young Englishman, in whose honest eyes
admiration of herself could not be concealed. Indignation and surprise
struggled for supremacy.

"It's odd," remarked Mr. Wilks, who had a happy knack at times of saying
the wrong thing, "it's odd you should 'ave 'appened to come just at the
same time as Miss Kate did."

"It's my good fortune," said Hardy, with a slight bow. Then he cocked a
malignant eye at the innocent Mr. Wilks, and wondered at what age men
discarded the useless habit of blushing. Opposite him sat Miss Nugent,
calmly observant, the slightest suggestion of disdain in her expression.
Framed in the queer, high-backed old chair which had belonged to Mr.
Wilks's grandfather, she made a picture at which Jem Hardy continued to
gaze with respectful ardour. A hopeless sense of self-depre